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FRAGMENTS 

IN 

PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 



V J 



FRAGMENTS 



IN 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 



BEING 



COLLECTED ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES 



BY 



JAMES MARK BALDWIN 

PH.D. PRINCETON, HON. D.SC. OXON, LL.D. GLASGOW 
STUART PROFESSOR IN PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1902 



^&* 



$>v 



THE I tBRARY *F 
6&NQAE83, 

Two Cowee Received 

APR. U 1902 

CO*YW«MT BNTRt 

CL«tfc/XXr No, 
COPY B. _ 



Copyright, 1902 
By Charles Scribner's Sons 



Published April, 1902 



• • •. 



UNIVERSITY TRESS • JOHN WILSON 
AND SON • CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 



L 



TO MY WIFE 

Ifyzhn (&xtzn 23altifom 

WHOSE SYMPATHY AND HELP HAVE BEEN UNFAILING DURING ALL 
THE YEARS AND IN ALL THE INTERESTS OF MY 
PURSUIT OF PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 



PREFATOKY NOTE 

The volume is made up of papers selected from a 
larger number scattered during fifteen years in various 
journals. It is thought worth while to gather them to- 
gether because — and the selections are made with view 
to this — they are related to larger topics on which I have 
published more extensively — or intend to — in separate 
works. The group of philosophical essays are intro- 
ductory to a developed view of the world. The critical 
and historical papers naturally stand more squarely on 
their own feet ; yet they too walk in a direction, and 
carry their own signboards. The strictly experimental 
studies, on the other hand, give results which in so far 
justify their own presence here either as contributing 
something to their respective topics, or as announcing 
ideas which have proved in some small way fruitful in 
the later literature. 

Speaking of signboards, it may be well to erect one or 
two of them in this place, in advance, though I know 
the risks of labelling things, and tremble before that risk. 
Yet one may be allowed to 'encourage his reader to 
start in — -or to discourage him from starting in! — -by 
telling him what the general direction is. At any rate 
so much is in my mind to say, not only for readers of 
these papers, but for those who may know the more 
connected discussions of my other books. 

vii 



PREFATORY NOTE 

First, the philosophical presupposition of a view 
which joins the words " Philosophy " and " Science " is, 
to my thinking, at once an Idealism and also a Natural- 
ism. No philosophy can to-day deny Naturalism; by 
Naturalism meaning the recognition of the right of 
Dame Nature, — physical, vital, mental, — to be and to 
do what she really is and does with no let nor hin- 
drance whatever, from us or from all the tribe of 
thought. 

If we allow science at all — knowledge of Nature, at 
all — then the ideal of science and of scientific explana- 
tion is once for all erected. The camel's body will 
follow his nose ! Philosophy at the best must saddle 
the camel — not hack him to pieces, nor essay to build 
a more comely beast from such of his disjecta membra 
as suit a finished taste ! Naturalism, which, in my 
usage of the term, is a name for science not for philos- 
ophy, must sweep the boards of every fact that " is, was, 
or ever shall be," of every fact of every kind, before its 
task is done, leaving not a pawn on any square of the 
board we call the cosmos. 

Second, Philosophy is a new reading of Science, a 
saying of this or that about knowledge — not a special 
species of knowledge, nor a discovery of what is new. 
Philosophy evaluates, estimates, criticises, unifies, 
enjoys. Philosophy says " How ? " — to Science's 
" What? " How can this and that both be true ? — how 
can the universe hold both man and nature ? — both 
fact and ideal ? — both " is " and " ought " ? How can 
action be immoral and thinking false ? — the world so 
beautiful and its second ring so hollow ! In short : 
How can and how must we men think Nature and act 
naturally ? — Nature being what and only what science 
makes her out to be. 

viii 



PREFATORY NOTE 

If such be one's presuppositions, then it follows that 
one's philosophy is simply one's thought — one's best 
thought — about Nature. 

Now another signboard — a personal signboard ! My 
best thought of nature, my type of philosophy, is an 
Idealism which finds that the universe of science, is, 
when all is said, a cosmos which is not only true but 
also beautiful, and in some sense good. Science tells us 
what is true ; that is science's prerogative : and what- 
ever may be science's final word about Nature, that word 
is in so far the truth of the matter. Philosophy then 
enters her questions : How can such truth be also good, 
beautiful, livable — or none of these ? While others say 
other things, and many others many other things, I say 
— using the liberty of this preface — it is true and good 
because it is beautiful. Nothing, I think, can be true 
without being beautiful, and nothing can be, in any high 
sense, good without being beautiful. In the words of 
my colleague and friend Professor A. T. Ormond (Foun- 
dations of Knowledge, p. 228 ) " the aesthetic principle is 
at the same time a demand and an intuition ... an 
ideal requirement and an intuition under which our 
world completes itself. ... It represents the point in 
our conceptions where worth and truth coalesce and 
become one." 

The ascription of beauty, a reasoned, criticised, 
thought-out ascription of aesthetic quality, is the final 
form of our thought about nature, man, the world, 
the All. Let this be our sign-board — vague-seeming 
as it is ! 

J. M. B. 

Princeton, March, 1902. 



IX 



CONTENTS 



Page 
Chapter 

I. Philosophy : its Relation to Life and Edu- 
cation ". . 3 

II. The Idealism of Spinoza 24 

III. Recent Discussion in Materialism .... 42 

IV. Professor Watson on Reality and Time . 62 
V. The Cosmic and the Moral ....... 70 

VI. Psychology Past and Present 77 

VII. The Postulates of Physiological Psychology 139 
VIII. The Origin of Volition in Childhood . . . 159 
IX. Imitation: a Chapter in the Natural His- 
tory of Consciousness 168 

X. The Origin of Emotional Expression . . . 210 

XI. The Perception of External Reality . . . 232 

XII. Feeling, Belief, and Judgment 239 

XIII. Memory for Square Size 248 

XIV. The Effect of Size-Contrast upon Judg- 

ments of Position in the Retinal Field 257 

XV. An Optical Illusion 275 

XVI. New Questions in Mental Chronometry . . 283 

XVII. Types of Reaction 287 

XVIII. The "Type-Theory" of Reaction .... 303 
-* xi 



CONTENTS 

Chapter 

XIX. The Psychology of Religion : p age 

1. Historical 321 

2. Psychological 327 

3. Sociological 331 

XX. Shorter Philosophical Papers: 

1. Theism and Immortality 338 

2. Moscow after the Coronation 345 

3. Mr. Spencer's Philosophy 353 

XXI. Shorter Literary Papers: 

1. Contemporary Philosophy in France .... 359 

2. Professor James' Principles of Psychology . . 371 



XII 



FRAGMENTS IN PHILOSOPHY 
AND SCIENCE 



I 



PHILOSOPHY: ITS RELATION TO LIFE AND 
EDUCATION 1 

" One seems to hear three conflicting voices throughout the centuries. 
The response made by one of these is: ' I can see nothing;' adding, with 
monstrous inconsistency: 'I have faith all the same in the inductions of 
physical science.' A contrary utterance comes from another voice : * / can 
see the universe through and through.' These two voices are apt to over- 
bear the third: '/ see enough,' it proclaims, 'to justify the faith that I am 
living in a universe in which the natural is subordinate to, yet in harmony with, 
the moral and spiritual order and purpose which my higher being requires; 
and I also find that the more I cultivate this faith by philosophical reflection, 
the better I can see the little that can be conquered by practical reason, and the 
more wisely I can shape my life.' " — Professor Fraser. 

The popular estimate of philosophy is generally 
unfavorable. Popularly philosophy, metaphysics, is 
considered the domain of speculation and theory, the 
subject most removed from human life, the philoso- 
pher's excuse, perhaps, for the neglect of the social 
and political duties of common men. \While philoso- 
phers, in their lives and acts, may give countenance to 
this view, philosophy abjures it; and she abjures it 
both in the name of the task she seeks to perform and 
of the tasks she has performed in the world. Philoso- 
phy has been the soul of the world's great movements 
in history, in politics, in art, in religion ; wherever an 
affair of human interest has gone deep enough to give 

1 Inaugural address delivered at the University of Toronto in 1890. 
Reprinted from The Presbyterian and Reformed Review, January, 1894. 

3 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

color to a nation's development, hindrance to human 
wrongs, or vigor to the higher aspiration of a people 
— there, therein, has been philosophy. 

The fallacious popular estimate of philosophy is 
easily explained ; it is fallacious because it is the popu- 
lar estimate. Philosophy has for a mission a task which 
the majority of men take for granted, at the v same time 
that they decry it and its pursuers. Men act on the 
supposition that the world is reasonable, that knowledge 
is true, that duty is right, that human affections and 
expectations are not a mirage of desert hopes, that 
nature has satisfactions for her own cravings, and that 
every phase of human emotion has an answering re- 
sponse somewhere ; but how many of us can justify 
these beliefs from our experience ? Who of us will en- 
deavor to explain the most legitimate and commonplace 
affairs of life ? When one attempts this he becomes a 
philosopher. He undertakes a task in which all men 
are interested. And yet when it takes to itself a name 
and proposes for itself a programme, this attempt is one 
in which most men take no interest. 

There is an important sense, however, in which the 
popular opinion of philosophy is true. The nature of 
the subject with which it deals ; the more or less con- 
jectural hypotheses which may be put forth with dog- 
matic assurance and confidence and some show of reason 
— hypotheses which often rest upon individual preju- 
dice or misconception, or exhibit ignorance of established 
fact; the traditional belief that no philosophy is true 
which does not explain the infinite and eternal, however 
it may neglect the concrete and empirical ; the audacity 
with which the metaphysician sometimes explodes his 
guns over the heads but beneath the regard of the 
plodding and successful worker in science — all these 

4 



PHILOSOPHY AND LIFE 

things have tended to bring speculation into disre- 
pute, and to make metaphysics synonymous with fancy. 
In the language of Clifford, "the word philosopher 
has come to mean the man who thinks it his business 
to explain everything in a certain number of large 
books." 

It is against this abuse of philosophy that I wish on 
this occasion especially to protest ; not against the criti- 
cism which is aimed at the extravagance of speculation. 
But in so far as philosophy in its true province and as 
concerned with its true problem is involved in this criti- 
cism, such aspersions are unjust, and they should be 
vigorously met — met on the ground of the popular con- 
siderations which are urged by the detractors of meta- 
physical study. 

With a view to such a popular presentation of the 
claims of philosophy, the problems which it undertakes 
to solve may engage our attention at the outset, and 
my first proposition is this : That philosophical problems 
are problems of human life. 

For example, what philosophical students call the 
world-problem : whence the world, what the world, why 
the world, whither the world? One philosopher an- 
swers: Whence the world? It is eternal. What the 
world ? It is matter and mechanism. Why the world ? 
It has no end nor purpose. Whither the world? To 
extinction or back to eternity. And we ask how the 
reply of the materialist bears upon human life. He 
answers : Man is part of, the world, man results from 
matter and mechanism, man is without purpose and 
without destiny. He eats, he drinks, to-morrow he 
dies ; nature and natural satisfactions are the only good : 
self-sacrifice, generosity, love, have no meaning beyond 

5 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

gratification ; happiness is my legitimate end, and happi- 
ness alone is worthy of my striving. 

Now this doctrine is philosophical, and many a man 
believes it who does not live it out; while many an- 
other lives it out without formulating it. Convince a 
man that the mind is a function of the brain, that emo- 
tion is the discharge, the equilibrium, the interplay of 
nervous forces ; that the will is no more than complex 
feelings of innervation or inhibition ; and he must think 
more in reference to his physical personality and its 
impulses and satisfactions than of the pursuit of 
ideal things for which his theory gives him no justifi- 
cation. His conduct must have reference, tacitly at 
least, to the sphere of this particular kind of reality 
— to the principle in which he believes the order of 
things is ultimately grounded — and his altruistic part 
must live more or less under protest, or by inconsistent 
tolerance. 

Another philosopher says: What the world? I do 
not know. Whence, why, whither the world ? I do not 
know. I am ignorant of all explanation of the consti- 
tution, origin, and destiny of things, and what is more 
to the point, I flatter myself that I do not care. What 
bearing has this on human life ? This : — that the 
denial and neglect of problems does not banish them. 
If a man have any intellectual part, any sense of meaning 
in the events, or even in the dead matter, of creation, 
he must realize the inevitable interrogation marks which 
confront him, turn where he will. What is birth, life, 
death? What is the state? What is capital, labor, 
civilization? His whole environment presses in upon 
him like so many goads prodding him on to inquiry. 
To say ' I do not know ' is to deny himself the stature of 
manhood, the vigor of developed intelligence, to suppress 

6 



PHILOSOPHY AND LIFE 

the faculties of invention and imaginative construction, 
to put his hand to his own throat and choke off the 
potencies within him. Where were nature-discovery, 
labor-saving devices, practical conveniences and com- 
forts, to say nothing of ideal things, if an Agnostic 
theory of the world were kept consistently to the fore ? 

Still another says: What the world? An idea, a 
dream. Whence the world ? From my thought. Why 
the world? To condition my thought. Whither the 
world ? Back to the place of ideal forms — where the 
subjective idealist loves to lose himself in contemplation. 
What effect has this on life ? This : — it leads away 
from the material, the mechanical, the definite, to the 
vague, the shadowy, the unreal. Stern conditions are 
removed in thought, not in fact. Hard surroundings are 
scorned, not overcome. Humanity is neglected, not re- 
lieved. The subjective Idealist builds his own world 
and lives in it, the happiest of men but not the most 
useful. Incentive to action, the sting of stern inflexible 
reality does not penetrate his armor, and too often 
he lifts no effective arm to advance the commonplace 
utilities of life. 

Again, consider the problem of knowledge. Is there 
such a thing as knowledge? If so, of what? Of an 
external world, of self, of God? What is truth? y 

Answer this with the Positivist who admits no knowl- 
edge but of the external world, to whom consciousness 
has no legitimate voice, to whom the inner world is 
an illusion, and then take stock of human life. It is 
then measured in terms of the yard and pound — it is 
of value as it is brought into relation to the profits 
and losses of trade or the utilities of material acquisi- 
tion. Physical science receives all merited attention, 
discovery in nature transforms society ; but the sesthetic, 

7 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

the poetic, and the human in any true sense, die out. 
American civilization is in some of its aspects at once 
an example and a warning of Positivism in individual 
and national life. 

Answer this question with the philosophical Sceptic, 
the pure experientialist to whom all that we call knowl- 
edge is a fleeting play of mental states, a panorama of 
subjective pictures with no reality either in the world or 
in mind — and estimate again the value of life. The 
material now vanishes with the ideal, positive science, 
conscious incentives, wealth, distinction, glory, fade from 
pursuit, for the material is a phantom show as mind 
and its utterances are. And what is left? Ask Hel- 
vetius, Diderot and La Mettrie. They answer for us: 
sensations, gleams of pleasure, atoms of living. Nihil- 
ism is its developed doctrine and anarchism its logical 
attitude toward all restriction and order. 

But the affirmative answer to the question, " Can we 
find truth?" brings back the worth of living. If our 
natural knowledge is true, then science is possible, dis- 
covery and invention are leading us on to the ultimate 
revelation of nature's secret things ; if the mind works 
true, then its intimations of spiritual reality, of emo- 
tional satisfactions, of self-realization by self-control and 
choice of the best are worth while and so are its assur- 
ances of a goal, a destiny. 

Note further, the bearing of the answer of this ques- 
tion upon society and its institutions. Society is a 
structure based upon rights, rights waived and rights 
secured, mutually understood and respected. Let the 
restraints be removed from within, the authority of the 
voice which teaches me altruism and reciprocity of obli- 
gation and duty, and I become an enemy to society, an 
iconoclast, an anarchist, a political libertine. If morality 

8 



PHILOSOPHY AND LIFE 

is custom, why may I not deviate from custom ? Who 
made custom my master ? If government is a compact, 
who may say that I am a party to the compact ; and, if 
unwilling, by what authority can I be compelled? If 
law is convention, and convention is convenience, why 
not my convenience? A doctrine which runs to the 
brink of the French revolution — of the social disinte- 
gration due to Individualism in philosophy, y. 

We are thus led to see that the problems which the 
philosophic spirit sets itself are not different from the 
ordinary questions of our lives. We judge men every 
day by their philosophy ; their views on just those ques- 
tions which philosophers discuss. My second proposi- 
tion, accordingly, is this : That its effects on life are, in a 
general way, and when historically interpreted, a legiti- 
mate test of the truth or falsity of a philosophical doctrine 
or system. 

This position is often denied. We are told we must 
love truth for truth's sake, and leave the consequences 
to themselves ; that the inquirer, the philosopher, can- 
not be responsible for consequences. This is sometimes 
true ; yet it is surprising in how few cases it is true. It 
is never true in philosophy. From the nature of the case, 
consequences enter as a part of the material of the phil- 
osophic construction — consequences in experience and 
life. Philosophy puts the question : How can I explain 
man and his environment? It is only half a solution 
to explain either man or his environment. Materialism 
explains man in terms of the environment, subjective 
idealism explains the environment in terms of man ; but 
no philosophy is true which leaves out of its reckoning 
any degree on the arc which measures the mutual relation 
between personality and nature. 

9 



/ 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

Life is, therefore — to go a little deeper — the sphere 
of the interaction of man and nature, the sphere of ex- 
perience, the only storehouse of data from a philo- 
sophic solution. And all aspects of experience must 
have equal weight. It is the habit of natural science to 
magnify law, to deify universality, to disparage individ- 
uality, to ridicule heart ; this is the environment aspect of 
the question. The metaphysician and moralist is prone 
to magnify individuality, to deny law, to disparage the 
external ; this is the personality aspect. The rights of 
each must be fully recognized; yet the latter is and 
should be popularly emphasized in this generation for 
several reasons. 

In the first place, because the limitation of philosophi- 
cal data to experience carries the presumption that 
nature is always a party to experience, that that only 
is experience which consists in a reaction of man on 
nature. That this is a false presumption is seen in the 
larger half of human experience. The overwhelming 
testimony of life is that its greater part both has no 
material reference and is incapable of such a reference. 
The entire range of higher emotion points to needs which 
life never fully realizes, and by realizing, only enhances. 
The postulates of our ethical selves, which untutored 
intelligence spontaneously and daily reckons the most 
important, durable, and true of all our experiences, not 
only run above natural reactions, but often seem to run 
counter to them. The tendency of natural science is to 
the refusal to the heart of all share in the determina- 
tion of truth, the denial to the will of any validity in 
its requirement of a principle of regulation more inflex- 
ible for man than the principles of nature. Man may 
deny and violate natural law, bidding defiance to its 
material compulsion, and preserve that wholeness of inner 

10 



PHILOSOPHY AND LIFE 

truth which constitutes his integrity as man ; but who 
can escape the commandments of his own inner nature, 
the laAV of self-realization which tells him : " What thou 
art thou shalt act out, and wherein thou violatest the 
right thou thyself shalt suffer loss " ? 

But these inner truths should be further emphasized 
for their own sake ; it is strange that they should ever 
need emphasis. Why, if all facts are sacred and none 
are intentionally outraged, why should not facts of mind 
be as valid as facts of nature ? Why should not all facts 
of mind be as valid as any facts of nature ? Why is the 
emotional recoil which all men feel in the presence of 
cruelty not as good evidence that cruelty is contrary to 
the order of biological development as is found in the 
bleeding tissue which is left by a cruel blow ? Why 
is not the degenerate will which follows an egoistic 
theory of conduct as valid evidence that self-control is 
nature's higher law as are the physical effects which follow 
conduct on this theory ? It is as valid evidence, though 
in the former case we appeal to consequences, and in 
the latter case to law. But the former is law as much 
as is the latter. Biological evolution is based upon a 
principle whereby needs arise where satisfactions are, 
and where satisfactions are not found, there no need 
is; the economist develops the social organism on 
the same principle, that supply does not precede but 
always accompanies demand. Yet what treatment does 
the man receive at the hands of contemporary science 
who claims that an ethical demand is sufficient proof 
of its own normal satisfaction, and that mental intima- 
tions of immortality afford presumptive evidence of 
a future life? Yet the man of science knows that 
such inner experiences are facts, that they are expe- 
riences, and, in the face of such knowledge, sweeps them 

11 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

away as sentiment or illusion, and exhorts the man who 
is as good a scientist and a better philosopher than him- 
self, by reason of a more comprehensive theory of ex- 
perience, to curb his imagination, and cease to trouble 
himself about consequences ! 

But the natural sciences demand a further philosophy 
than is afforded by the simple postulate of experience ; 
for the possibility of experience, of a relation at all be- 
tween man and nature, must have its philosophy. To 
go no deeper into the question, " How is experience pos- 
sible ? " than the strict empiricist would follow, it occurs 
to me to ask by what right he uses experience at all ; by 
what right his categories or types serve him for the 
generalization of possible experience ; by what right he 
constructs hypotheses which go beyond experience. I 
ask him why he exercises faith in his investigations of 
nature, why he ever trusts his facts out of his sight — 
by what right, in the name of all that is empirical, he 
ventures to prophesy in regard to nature. His whole 
procedure in these respects — which are fundamentally 
one — is in so far a refutation of a philosophy which 
recognizes no values or meanings except those which 
experience appears to justify. 

We find accordingly that both the facts of personality 
and the facts of environment must be recast in a deeper 
metaphysic of experience itself. This problem underlies 
all the empirical work, both of the naturalist and of the 
philosopher, and they are equally dependent on its ver- 
dict. But in this more abstruse discussion, the mental 
claims a certain priority and nature-science must be 
content with second place. The physical investigator, 
therefore, who so loudly declaims against metaphysics 
and presses it to a preliminary self-defence, in its recog- 
nition of anything not subject to gravitation and cohesion, 

12 



PHILOSOPHY AND LIFE 

is only insisting on a procedure which must result in a 
curtailment of his own claims ; either in the way of an 
admission of lack of certainty in his results, or in the 
way of the recognition of other grounds of assurance 
than those afforded by the atomistic and fragmentary re- 
sults of experience. There are those who are modest 
enough to take the first of these alternatives, and there 
are also those who are philosophical enough to take the 
second. 

We are led, therefore, both from a superficial view of 
experience and by a more critical philosophical method, 
to the view that a system of thought may be legitimately 
judged by its effects on life and character. But the 
further question at once arises : How are these results 
to be estimated? How am I to sav what elements of 
character are due to a man's philosophical opinions, and 
how far is he moulded by the current doctrines of his 
generation ? These are legitimate questions, and their 
proper answer greatly narrows the range of the thesis we 
are considering in two distinct particulars, one of which 
is a caution taught us by the student of science, and the 
other of which we draw from the domain of historical 
study. 

For we may say — and this is where we must love truth 
for truth's sake and take no account of consequences — 
that facts, established truths, are never to be disregarded 
nor denied in view of their results. Facts are sacred, lead 
where they will. Do they interfere with our views of 
life? Then our views of life are wrong. Do they 
conflict with authority ? Then authority must go, be it 
authority customarily considered even more sacred. I 
would be the last to hamper investigation with a shrink- 
ing timidity of consequences. It is the main merit of 

13 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

the new movements in philosophy that they are throwing 
authority to the winds and letting facts stand for them- 
selves. But this is science, this treatment of isolated 
facts. Philosophy goes further in asking : How can I 
interpret these and other facts in a consistent theory ? 
Note carefully — not these facts only, but these and 
other facts. All facts are equal before law. Our theory 
must neglect none of them. Do they conflict with one 
another? Then my philosophy is not true, and it is 
quite possible that I am unable to construct a theory in 
the particular case that is true. A large number of phil- 
osophical questions to-day are in this stage waiting for 
further results from science, and on these questions phi- 
losophers should confess ignorance ; a modesty which is 
growing among us, and which is in striking contrast 
with the extravagant omniscience of some systems of 
metaphysics. 

Now, by consequences in life, I mean actual facts of 
my life — inner truths which are sacred, as facts. These 
we must preserve most loyally. But our cherished in- 
terpretations of them, our theories of living, these are 
no more than any hypotheses which serve their day and 
aid us to live until further truth teaches us to throw 
them aside, or reconstruct them with due reference to 
our new acquisitions. As far as disregard for conse- 
quences has reference to interpretations, it is just ; but 
when it includes fundamental mental experiences, those 
truths which go to make up our intellectual and moral 
integrity, it is wrong. It is in the latter interest, unfor- 
tunately, that the criticism of philosophy is usually 
made ; and it is sometimes in the former interest, unfor- 
tunately too, that the consequential argument is appealed 
to by speculative thinkers. 

Again, the bearings of a philosophy on life can only 

14 



PHILOSOPHY AND LIFE 

be discovered in a broad historical survey ; certainly not 
by a judgment of individual men. In individual cases 
it is the character that influences the philosophy as often 
as the reverse. Yet the history of philosophy studied by 
epochs and in periods of decided philosophical tendency, 
indicates results in morals, institutions, general life, which 
are unmistakable. We need no special historical research 
to inform us that Idealism inspired the mind in the 
blooming period of Greek art ; that Stoicism dominated 
the martial period of Roman greatness ; and that Mate- 
rialism has ruled in the history of French democracy. 
Whichever be cause and whichever be effect, phil- 
osophy and character, thought and life, can never be 
divorced. 

In view of the foregoing, a third position of general 
interest may be taken : That instruction in philosophy is 
an essential element in sound academic culture, and that 
to accomplish his true work in education the instructor 
in philosophy must be alive to the essential conditions 
of progress in each of several great departments of 
learning. 

The remarks already made to signalize the limitations 
of empirical science and its dependence on speculative 
theory indicate, in part, the relation of scientific study to 
philosophy in the course of university instruction. It is 
the boast of science that she stoops to small things, to 
the gathering and preserving of humble details, that she 
is ready to sacrifice the " lordly theory " to the " paltry 
fact," and it is a part of this pride that she should resent 
and expose the study which too often proceeds in igno- 
rant and arrogant neglect of the truths which she has 
established by patient and exhaustive toil. The opposi- 
tion of science, so far as it is reasonable, is not an oppo- 

15 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

sition to philosophy, but to the vagaries in the name of 
philosophy, which clothe their barrenness in the garments 
of profound generalization, and scout the humane ends 
of utility which science aims to subserve. With these 
the true philosopher has as little patience as the true 
scientist, and it is his purpose as well as his interest to 
rid his vocation of the stigma which popular feeling and 
scientific criticism unite in casting upon it, and in which 
the voice of history none too loudly joins. Philosophy 
has been a screen for the scientific charlatan ; in her 
marble halls she has sheltered the mystic, the rhapsodist, 
the dreamer ; and certain of her geniuses, the greatest 
intellects the world has seen, have lost their moral birth- 
right and even their good name in the maze of guess-work 
which the irony of scientific men denominates meta- 
physics. But this is our misfortune as largely as our 
fault, and the sober thinkers of to-day are at one with 
the workers in science in demanding the restatement of 
philosophical problems in terms which admit of the 
application of exact methods, and imply reverence for 
the humblest truth. 

The return to experience in philosophy is as much 
needed as the return to philosophy is needed in the 
sciences of experience. Empiricism will not secure 
science, and speculation alone will afford no true basis 
for philosophy. The scientist must needs be a philoso- 
pher, and because in the past he has partially realized 
this need science has made advances ; on the other hand, 
the philosopher must needs be a scientist, and it is 
because in the past he has not realized this need that 
philosophy has not claimed her share in the discovery 
and application of truth. The philosophical function of 
the scientist is found in the imaginative construction 
which foreruns discovery; the philosopher builds his 

16 



PHILOSOPHY AND LIFE 

construction wider, but its foundation is where the 
scientist has laid it. The two disciplines are therefore 
necessary to each other, and their place is side by side in 
a liberal education. The elements of scientific method 
should precede abstract philosophy, and the later de- 
velopment of speculation should rest at once upon the 
data drawn from the laboratory and the museum, on the 
one hand, and from the gallery of the mind on the other, 
where are found the specimens of the psychologist ; that 
is, in facts within and facts without philosophy takes 
its rise. 

This demand has found fruit and practical justification 
in late years in the new directions in which philosophy 
has turned inquiry, and in the more exact methods by 
which many questions before regarded as simply specula- 
tive have been approached. In psychology the effect has 
been as marked for its novelty as for its healthful stim- 
ulus. Comparative and experimental psychology are the 
direct outgrowth of the modern scientific spirit, and it is 
to the merit of contemporary philosophy that the new 
work is receiving its hearty endorsement. M. Ribot may 
see in this movement the decay of speculation prophesied 
by Comte, and Dr. Maudsley may declare that an organic 
theory of mental unity seems, in view of the newer 
results, to be the most probable hypothesis ; but other 
workers insist that no results so far established by 
physiological psychology give even presumptive improb- 
ability to a spiritual and ideal theory of mind. I speak 
here with the conviction arrived at through earnest study 
in the laboratory and with the physicist, and with the 
caution which is born of a realization of unsettled prob- 
lems, and I say that neurological and psycho-physical 
research has done no hurt to an idealistic philosophy. 

But further than this, this is just the field in which 
2 17 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

philosophy may redeem its reputation, and show its 
ability and willingness to handle its own problems in 
an exact way. Shall I give up my study of the mind 
because the physiologist challenges me to a searching 
examination of the points of common interest to him 
and to me? Shall I abandon the field to him, at the 
same time refusing to accept the results which he attains 
by laborious research ? However just my refusal of his 
results may be, it can be justified only after an intelligent 
estimate of his work. No, my better part is to join with 
him in a common effort, rendered more effectual perhaps 
by the combined gifts of the scientist and the philosopher, 
and render assistance in the search for truth which is of 
the utmost importance both for the science of the organ- 
ism and for the theory of the mind. This active interest 
in experimental psychology and a personal preparation 
for such work no professor of philosophy in this genera- 
tion should lack, in justice to his students and to truth. 
For the questions of neuro-psychology are receiving just 
now as much attention as are the questions either of pure 
physiology or of pure mental science. Psycho-physical 
laborations are growing in number and in importance, 
and special organs are being devoted to the publication of 
their results. No university course in mental science is 
now complete which does not present at least the methods 
and main results of scientific psychology, and the 
larger institutions in both worlds are seeking men of 
proper training for exact and original work. This cer- 
tainly indicates progress. If the additions which are 
being made are additions of fact outside the sphere of 
mind, they are valuable at least for physiology ; but if 
they bear in any way, however remotely, upon the mental, 
we should be free to enlarge our view of the sphere and 
aim of mental philosophy. 

18 



PHILOSOPHY AND LIFE 

Such study, however, should come after the descrip- 
tive and introspective study of the mind, and after the 
principles of logic, especially inductive logic, have been 
mastered. We shall then expect students who take 
philosophy freely to be better observers and reasoners 
than their fellows when they come to more advanced 
work either in philosophy or in science. 

In the study of literature and language the function 
of philosophy is plain, and its value the philologist and 
literary critic are generally quite ready to admit. Com- 
parative philology finds its fundamental explanation in 
comparative psychology, and the latter is only possible 
on the basis of a training in the interpretation of mental 
movements. The conjectures of the philologist and the 
hypotheses of the anthropologist may sometimes be con- 
firmed or corrected by a simple reference to the psychol- 
ogy of speech and the laws of the growth of conceptions. 
The study of the child mind, so long neglected by 
philosophers, but now becoming very important to men- 
tal theory, throws great light upon the growth of idioms 
of speech, grammatical forms and rhetorical rules, and is 
the only source of such information open to the philolo- 
gist. What is language but the expression of higher 
mental processes in their different stages, and who is 
able to interpret its forms and criticise its adequacy 
better than he who understands the mental movements 
of which it is the expression ? 

A further relation also exists between the student of 
language and the speculative thinker, namely, this : lan- 
guage is the product of human faculty, a record of human 
experience and achievement, and it is itself a part of that 
general humanity or life in which philosophy finds its 
problems. Not only then must the student of language, 

19 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

in its deeper relations and meaning, see its bearing upon 
the more general hypotheses which philosophy advances, 
but the philosopher is true to the conditions of his prob- 
lem only as he is himself a philologist, or stands in the 
most sympathetic attitude towards the results of philo- 
logical study. 

Of literary criticism and composition the same may be 
said, but with added emphasis. The canons of literary 
art and appreciation are involved, in an intimate way, in 
our developed world-theory. ^Esthetics cannot be scien- 
tific unless it be true subjectively ; that is, all aesthetic 
composition is a matter of the constructive imagination, 
its subject matter, its poetic form, its adequate execution, 
all appeal to the ideal estimate to which philosophy seeks 
to give formulation. The questions which spring up 
around the aesthetic problem take deep hold upon the 
relations of life. The points of most lively present dis- 
cussion in literature and art turn upon our view of phil- 
osophic ethics and its relation to our sense of the beau- 
tiful. Who can write with authority on realism in art ? 
Certainly not the man who has no knowledge of the 
principles of ethics in their social application, on the one 
hand, and their relation to mental ideals on the other. I 
do not mean that literary taste is a matter of learning ; 
but it is nevertheless true that the critic, the instructor, 
must be able to throw his canons of taste and execution 
into form if he would justify the general principles of 
his distinctive school, or if he would instruct the intel- 
lect and refine the taste of the student; and all such 
formulations contribute to the philosophy of literature 
and art. 

The relation of this department to political and eco- 
nomic theories is also close and important. The theory 

20 



PHILOSOPHY AND LIFE 

of the state is one of the most difficult of philosophical 
problems, and its solution waits upon the decision of the 
psychologist and moralist. The most potent criticisms 
urged against the social visionary are drawn from 
psychology ; we say that his Utopia is impossible while 
man is constituted as he is, that is, while mental laws, 
passions, impulses, temperaments, are what they are. We 
go to the philosopher for the foundations of a political 
and social system under which man can work out his 
destiny. Society itself and the state are developed 
products of the human mind, and so the philosophy of 
human life must explain and justify society and the state. 
There is no other department of thought which takes so 
deep a hold upon popular morals and brings so promi- 
nently into view the popular character as the political. 
We cannot divorce our politics from our morals, nor our 
estimate of political desert from our judgment of personal 
character! But at the same time uninstructed popular 
movements are nowhere more damaging and extravagant, 
and nowhere else is there such a field for the arts of 
logical and emotional sophistry. Hence the necessity 
for the codification, the unification, the philosophy of 
duties and rights which is law. Individual thought and 
impulse is not law, individual conscience is not law ; but 
how do we know this, if not by the recognition of a uni- 
versal of thought and a universal of conduct, two great 
departments of philosophy? The economist and the 
legislator must understand human motives if they would 
construct a policy or form a statute opportunely. The 
only capable student of political and general history, and 
the only safe guardian of national franchise, is the man 
who knows something of the historic development of the 
human mind as seen in institutions, and knows on the 
other hand how to lead the popular thought of a constit- 

21 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

uency to a higher plane of political theory. The dreamer 
in politics is, perhaps, more dangerous than the dreamer 
in philosophy, but he is always a dreamer in philosophy 
before he becomes a dreamer in politics ; and on the 
other hand the safest exponent of political progress is 
the man who studies most closely the laws of motive in 
conduct and the growth of ethical conceptions among the 
people. 

Such, in brief and defective outline, is the place and 
function of philosophy in the modern university, and cer- 
tainly such a theme or aggregate of themes is broad enough 
for a host of workers. No one man can by any combi- 
nation of gifts or courses of preparation do justice to this 
programme and at the same time do justice to himself. 
Hence many separate chairs are now devoted to this 
work in the larger institutions, chairs of Psychology, 
general and experimental, Logic, Ethics, Philosophy of 
Religion, Metaphysics, History of Philosophy, Peda- 
gogics, and ^Esthetics. 

The magnifying of philosophy, therefore, in view of 
what has been said, is not the magnifying of one branch 
of study at the expense of others, or of one mode of intel- 
lectual discipline in contrast with another ; it is, rather, 
the magnifying of study and discipline. Its concern is 
to reach the statement of facts which underlie all knowl- 
edge, and of rules for the conduct of the understand- 
ing in the various lines of research. It aims to make 
men vigorous thinkers, awake to alternatives, patient of 
hypotheses, cautious of conclusions, able in attack and 
defence, liberal and catholic in opinion. Excessive literary 
culture makes men in some degree erudite, pedantic, near- 
sighted to truth ; excessive scientific culture makes men 
in some degree positive, syllogistic, unsympathetic to 

22 



PHILOSOPHY AND LIFE 

the more problematical bearings of truth ; philosophical 
culture makes men, or should make men, judicial, toler- 
ant, alive to the infinite possibilities of truth, and full 
of reverence for truthful thought and most of all for 
truthful life. 



23 



II 

THE IDEALISM OF SPINOZA 1 

Recent years have been rich in discussions of the 
historical position and work of the Jew Spinoza. His 
life has always had a singular charm and attractiveness 
from its stern uprightness and frank independence, and 
it has been a protest against the unjust personal attacks 
of many — theologians often — who fail to discriminate 
between opinion which is individual, and life which is 
universal. The man who thinks true but lives false is 
worse than the man who thinks false but lives true; 
and history utters few clearer and more emphatic words 
than those she uses to tell of Spinoza's nobility and 
grandeur of character. And yet Dr. Hodge, writing 
from the standpoint of dogmatic theology, is right in 
placing Spinoza in the front of the host of modern de- 
structive rationalists, as every one knows who appre- 
ciates the Spinoza revival of the eighteenth century. 
Herder and the author of the Wolfenbiittel fragments 
have a distinct background of Spinozism. Goethe said 
Spinoza was one of the overpowering influences of his 
life, and no one doubts it who reads the Geheimnisse. 

1 This paper was written with especial reference to Sir F. Pollock's 
Spinoza, his Life and Philosophy, 1st ed., London, 1880 (a revised second 
edition appeared in 1899). Other English works which may be consulted 
are : Martineau, Study of Spinoza, and Types of Ethical Theory, chapter 
iii., bk. i., Sigwart, Der Spinozismus, and the historians (Ueberweg, 
Fischer, Erdmann). (From The Presbyterian Review, Jan., 1889.) 

24 



THE IDEALISM OF SPINOZA 

Schleiermacher would have been impossible without 
Spinoza. 

This is all true, and Spinozism is rightly considered the 
force that makes for Pantheism ; yet in philosophy we 
look at the foundations of things, and while we may con- 
tend strenuously with a man about our theological sys- 
tem, we do it the more hopefully when he is one with 
us in the fundamental postulates of our world theory. 
And so much the more if his sympathies are human and 
his aspirations Godward. In metaphysics Spinoza is 
on the side of Theism, the intuition of God, and pure 
morality; in the humanities he has been a preserving 
and cleansing power. The high idealistic tone of Ger- 
man literature, especially verse, was inspired and pre- 
served by him, and a similar wave of spiritual perception 
swept over England when Coleridge in his own way re- 
produced direct from the pages of the Ethics the doctrine 
of an all-pervading Reason and Love. Theology may 
have as much to fear from pantheism and mystic ideal- 
ism as from absolute scepticism or sensationalism — as 
much to fear from Spinoza as from Hume or D'Alem- 
bert — but philosophy has not, and for the same reason 
that an earthquake does more damage at the top of a 
building than at the bottom. 

The question, " Is Spinoza an idealist ? " has arisen, 
I think, largely from the fact spoken of above, that his 
influence has been decidedly idealistic, that is, idealistic 
in a broad human sense. A distinction must be care- 
fully preserved between the high spiritual view of things 
which is sometimes called idealism, and the definite form 
of philosophic thought that bears that name in many 
different systems, just as we hear of a materialism of 
life and thinking, when strict materialism in a philo- 
sophical sense is quite inapplicable. The inquiry before 

25 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

us is concerned exclusively with the rigid philosophical 
meaning of idealism. No one is disposed to doubt that 
Spinoza was a high spiritual thinker ; our only question 
is: Does his system contain the germs of philosophic 
idealism, and if so is it an essential part of his thought, 
and what was his personal attitude toward it ? 



There are several principles to be observed in the 
application of the historical method to the development 
of philosophic thought — principles which are evident 
enough in statement, but difficult of application. First, 
all such development must be founded upon undoubted 
fact. Comte's application of his "law of the three 
stages," Hegel's development of " reason " in ancient ' 
history, and Jacobi's exposition of Spinoza, are cases of 
the violation of this requirement through misunder- 
standing or misrepresentation. Second, all development 
must begin with the stage reached by the doctrine which 
is developing, and not with the starting-point of the 
doctrine which is subsequently developed. To the neg- 
lect of this law is due, I think, half the misconstruction 
in the history of modern philosophy. A library of Locke 
commentaries is useless to-day because they begin to 
estimate him not where he left off, but where Hume 
began. Locke was not an enemy of a-priorism, but of 
innate ideas; and to judge him rightly we must deal 
with the latter doctrine as it was developing, and not 
with the former as it was afterward developed. There 
is a broad gulf here, and it is not fair to blow Locke 
into it because his house was built on the windward 
side. Third, philosophic doctrines in their interdepen- 
dence should exhibit a logical and essential rather than 

26 



THE IDEALISM OF SPINOZA 

an accidental connection. This principle is also of capi- 
tal importance. The controversy as to the Platonism of 
the Sermon on the Mount 1 illustrates the difficulty of 
distinguishing accidental from essential resemblances in 
trains of thought. But the principle is plain. Of two 
conflicting doctrines, that must be neglected which is 
of less importance in the author's general system, rather 
than that which is essential and whose erasure will 
wreck the entire work of his hands. Without prejudging 
either we must accept as the author's opinion that which 
is clearly advocated by him. 2 

The Ethics of Spinoza is an effort to put a system of 
speculative metaphysics into strict mathematical form. 
Following the lead of Descartes, who made mathematical 
clearness and distinctness the test of necessary truth, 
Spinoza advanced certain self-evident propositions or 
axioms from which the closely linked chain of proposi- 
tions and demonstrations depends. It is Etluca ordine 
geometrica demonstrata. His other writings are more or 
less special or practical in their subject-matter, and it is 
to this great work that our attention must be especially 
given. 

It is evident at once to those who are at all familiar 
with the doctrine of Spinoza that implicit idealistic 
coloring, if it is to be found at all, must appear in the 
doctrine of " attributes." Remembering that to Spinoza 
" substance " is the absolute and infinite ground of all 
things, the self-caused, that of which nothing positive 
can be asserted or known, " that which is in itself 

1 See parallel drawn by Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory, i., pp. 
78-80. 

2 An example of this is the conflict between Sir William Hamilton's 
doctrine of consciousness as the necessary characteristic of mind, and his 
theory of unconscious or " latent " mental images. The latter is his 
clearly expressed opinion. 

27 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

and is conceived by itself," " whose concept needs not 
the concept of another thing for it to be formed from " 
(JEth., Def. 3), we can understand the definition of attri- 
bute as " that which intellect perceives concerning sub- 
stance, as constituting the essence thereof " (Def. 4) ; 
and again (Epist. 27), "it is called attribute with re- 
spect to the understanding, which attributes to substance 
such a determined nature as aforesaid." This definition 
of attribute, not as a manifestation of substance, but as 
what the intellect takes for a manifestation, looks imme- 
diately to the magnification of mind in relation to the 
world, a form of absolute idealism ; yet while we admit 
this fully from the point of view of this single doctrine, 
we maintain that the system, as a whole, cannot bear this 
construction; that insistence upon this aspect of the 
doctrine of attribute overthrows the doctrine of sub- 
stance and subverts the entire structure of the meta- 
physics ; and that this looking toward idealism is foreign 
to Spinoza's own view of his work. 

The argument may be conducted along the following 
lines : 

1. All implicit development of Spinoza toward Ideal- 
ism rests upon the theory of perception advocated in 
Def. 4. 

2. This theory of perception is not necessary to the 
general system ; indeed, it contradicts its fundamental 
conception. 

3. Consequently this theory of perception must be 
modified in conformity with the great lines of Spinoza's 
thought, i. e., it must be given the form of absolute a 
realism. 

1 Used in the sense of the " identity " philosophy, of which Spinoza 
is called the father. 



28 



THE IDEALISM OF SPINOZA 



II 

Turning to the development of the doctrine of attribute, 
we will remember that Spinoza's substance is not only 
infinite in its being, but also in its attributes. By defi- 
nition it is " absolutely infinite, . . . consisting of infinite 
attributes, whereof each one expresses eternal and infinite 
being." If there were not an infinity of attributes the 
substance would not be absolutely infinite, for here 
would be an unfulfilled possibility of enlargement. 
Further, each of these attributes, partaking of the 
nature of the absolute, is infinite, or, to preserve the 
distinction of Def. 4, would be perceived as such by an 
infinite intelligence. Man is endowed with the power 
of perceiving two of these attributes, matter or exten- 
sion, and mind — but not in their full extent. We can 
conceive an intelligence capable of mightier efforts than 
ours, of making the entire universe of thought and ex- 
tension its object ; this intellect would differ from ours 
in degree. And we can also conceive an intelligence 
that differs from ours in kind, one that is endowed with 
different capacities toward the absolute — that is, capa- 
ble of perceiving attributes of which we know nothing, 
and differing from others of its kind, like ours, in degree. 
So in passing from our present state of knowledge of the 
attributes to the state of knowledge that infinite intelli- 
gence enjoys, we must pass through an infinite number 
of stages, each representing an infinitely diversified series 
of intellects. But reasoning again from the impossi- 
bility of an unrealized possibility in reference to the 
absolute or its attributes, we reach the startling declara- 
tion that whatever is possible is actual. 1 So all these 

1 Eth., i., 16. 
29 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

intellects must exist, 1 and we seem to be giving to intel- 
lect a prominence that is discouraging. Yet this process 
of multiplying intellects is based upon Def . 4 — that is, 
it starts from the fact of perception, and not from that 
of reality. 2 

But not only does intellect perceive the attributes in 
general, as one of these it perceives itself ; and we have 
another line of idealistic development, noticed briefly by 
Mr. Pollock. Mind is counted twice. The unity of 
the attributes in the absolute gives the famous proposi- 
tion, " ordo et connexio rerum est ordo et comnexio ide- 
arum" All the modifications, modes, of one of the at- 
tributes are accompanied by modifications in all the 
others — modifications that are identical in fact, though 
partaking in exhibition of the peculiarity of the attri- 
bute to which they belong. Pollock, following Erd- 
mann, and perhaps Spinoza himself, uses the figure of 
infinite planes 3 of infinite magnitude to represent the 
attributes and identical figures drawn all over these 
planes to represent the modes. Spinoza's doctrine will 
admit of its further extension. Let us conceive all 
things under the name substance as concentrated at a 
point, and from this point expanding in attributes, radia- 

1 This seems to be hinted in Spinoza's answer (Epist. 68) to Tschirn- 
hausen's objection (Epist. 67), where we find the expression " infinite 
minds." See also Eth., ii., 7, and i., 10. 

2 Herbart reasons somewhat the same, likening Spinoza's doctrine of 
attribute to his own doctrine of " accidental view " (zufdllige Ansicht). 
He says : " He who would draw idealism from this would greatly err. 
Of this enemy of the whole cosmology Spinoza thiuks so little that he 
puts under the axioms of the second part these : ' Man thinks ' and ' We 
are conscious of particular bodies variously affected,' " etc. (Metaph., 
i., § 49). 

3 Lewes uses the figure of planes in the same connection ; his use of 
modes also is the same as Spinoza's, although he seems not to be aware of 
it {Problems of Life and Mind, ii., 16-22). 

30 



THE IDEALISM OF SPINOZA 

ting in infinite planes in all directions, and so consti- 
tuting an infinite sphere of existence. 1 Now let these 
planes be covered with figures varying infinitely in the 
limits of each plane, and not identical in the different 
planes. We know mind and body under different forms 
— under forms of thought and extension — and though, 
according to Spinoza, they are the same in essence, yet 
they are not perceived so by us. So these figures may 
differ in shape, provided they are reducible to an ultimate 
oneness. 2 To carry out the mathematical figure, let rec- 
tangular axes of three dimensions be drawn through the 
central point, and it is only necessary that all the figures 
in the plane of any two of these axes be reduced to the 
general equation of a circle in that plane, the common 
equation 

x 2 + y 2 = a 2 . 

The resulting equation must be that of a circle, for the 
modes are themselves substance, constituting in the in- 
finite mode the attribute, and in the great aggregate the 
universe, and the universe is represented as spherical. 

With this still inadequate conception of Spinoza's 
mighty flight of speculation — in Heinze's judgment the 
mightiest that the world has seen since Plato — we 
must ask by whom this universe is to be perceived? 
There cannot be another infinite, for by the doctrine of 
" Sameness of Indiscernibles " held by Spinoza, it would 
be identical with the infinite we are considering. There 

1 Spinoza uses the word " globule," Tract, de Deo et Homine. This is 
the old scientific conception of the world, the stars being fixed in a spher- 
ical shell (so Anaximenes, Xenophanes, etc.), also current in Jewish spec- 
ulations, with which Spinoza was no doubt familiar. 

2 Camerer says (Die Lehre Spinozas), quoting as authority Eth., iii., 6 : 
" Die Modi eines jeden Attributes involviren den Begriff ihres Attributes, 
nicht aber den eines Anderen." 

31 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

cannot be an outside intellect less than infinite, for it 
would be inadequate to the conception. It must be per- 
ceived by some intellect, otherwise, by Def. 4, there 
would be no attributes. There is but one alternative 
remaining, and that is that the universe is perceived by 
the intellect that is within; that by reason of peculiar 
endowment, or by reason of its constitution as intellect, 
or by reason of an original pre-eminence in the world 
building, the attribute intellect wraps its mighty folds 
around all substantial existence. This is the alterna- 
tive to which Pollock is compelled to drive Spinoza. 
He says : x " Spinoza seems to say that every mode of 
every attribute, other than thought, has a several mind 
or modification of thought to itself," and 2 " the modes 
of thought are numerically equal to the modes of all the 
other attributes together — in other words, thought, 
instead of being coequal with the infinity of the other 
attributes, is infinitely infinite." Again, in summing up 
the discussion: " the intellect that perceives an attribute as 
constituting the essence of substance belongs to the attribute 
of thought. Thus, if we push analysis farther, we find 
that thought swallows up all the other attributes, for all 
conceivable attributes turn out to be objective aspects of 
thought itself." The words in italics — which are mine 
— strikingly indicate the alternative just described. It 
should be noticed, again, that the whole difficulty here, 
as in the last case, arises from the perception of the attri- 
bute and not from its reality — i. e. 9 from Def. 4. 

Ill 

Passing to the second stage of our argument, we are 
led to inquire what relation the doctrine of Def. 4 bears 

1 P. 172, commenting on Epist. 68. 2 P. 179. 

32 



THE IDEALISM OF SPINOZA 

to the general system of Spinoza. The strange incon- 
sistency seen in denning substance as that of which no 
positive predication can be made, and then in postula- 
ting attributes of this substance, gives us at once the 
reason for the qualifying clause of Def. 4 — viz., that 
attributes are only what intellect " perceives concerning 
substance." Nothing can be asserted of substance, he 
declares, for all assertion is definition ; if negative, then 
limitative, and if positive, then predicative; and defi- 
nition is to Spinoza subsumption. 1 But substance as 
defined (Def. 3) is incapable of subsumption ; conse- 
quently, no attribute can be asserted in reality, and the 
only way to reach phenomenal existence at all is to make 
extension and thought attributes in perception. 

The application of the third of the canons of criticism 
already laid down leaves us no doubt as to which of 
these alternatives is Spinoza's real view. His doc- 
trine of substance, on the one hand, is the corner-stone 
of his metaphysics. His first work, 2 discovered latest, 
and probably dating back to the time of his excommuni- 
cation, when he was most completely under the leading 
of Descartes, announces the unity of God or substance, 
and reasons a priori therefrom. The unity and uni- 
formity of nature is the supreme principle of the later 
developed " system of nature " and of the " psychology," 
and this leads directly to the doctrine of the absolute 
and ultimate sameness of the attributes in their identi- 
cal substance. This is given its due importance by 
Pollock. He says : 3 " The first and leading idea in 
Spinoza's philosophy is that of the unity and uniformity 

1 Determinatio est negatio, Epist. 50. Cf. Schwegler, Gesckichte der 
Philosophic in Umriss, p. 106. 

2 De Deo et Homine, Germ, translation by Auerbach, in collected 
works, ed. of 1871. 

3 P. 84. Cf. Zeller, Geschichte d. deutschen Philosophie, 2d ed., p. 51. 

3 33 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

of the world." In the " psychology " this doctrine, as 
has been often pointed out, is the historical culmination 
of the discussions which had given rise to the dualism of 
Descartes, the " occasionalism " of Malebranche, and the 
" pre-established harmony " of Leibnitz ; and as a solu- 
tion of the problem of the interaction of body and mind, 
it anticipates the u double-aspect theory " as held to-day 
by the "identity" philosophers of Germany and the 
positivists of England and France. It is therefore suffi- 
ciently clear that the doctrine of one absolute substance, 
with all that it carries in its train, is essential to the 
thought of Spinoza. 

On the other hand, the distinction between an attribute 
and what the mind takes for an attribute seems to be an 
after-thought. We have no evidence that the distinction 
between noumenon and phenomenon, absolute and rela- 
tive, things in themselves as opposed to things as they 
appear, was current until Kant. At any rate, Spinoza 
nowhere urges it, as is admitted by Pollock in a 
remarkable passage. "The manifestations," he says, 1 
" are themselves the reality. Substance consists of attri- 
butes, and has no reality other than theirs. As for the 
suggestion that the perception of the understanding in 
this respect may be illusory — in other words, that the 
reality of things is unknowable — it is one which Spinoza 
was incapable of entertaining ; it is wholly foreign to his 
thought, and I submit that it ought to be to all sound 
thinking. ... To me it amounts to a contradiction in 
terms to speak of unknowable existence in an absolute 
sense. I cannot tell what existence means if not the 
possibility of being known or perceived." This is going 
to the utmost length in attributing realism to Spinoza, 
and though it is correct from the analogy of Spinoza's 

1 P. 163. See also p. 299. 
34 



THE IDEALISM OF SPINOZA 

thought, as will be shown, yet it destroys utterly the 
distinction drawn in the definition of attribute, and which 
is our only warrant for an idealistic development. If Spi- 
noza was incapable of entertaining the suggestion that 
the perception of the understanding may be illusory, then 
he meant nothing by distinguishing between attributes 
as they are and as they are perceived, and the ground 
of our idealism disappears. Yet the assertion that 
this distinction is foreign to his thought is too strong, 
and cannot be maintained. The words of Epistle 27 are 
unmistakable: " I understand the same by attribute (or 
by substance), except that it is called attribute with 
respect to the understanding." l And again : 2 " The 
understanding must apprehend the attributes and affec- 
tions of God, and nothing else." Proposition 10 of 
the Ethics is merely an enlargement of this distinc- 
tion, and without it can have no place in the teaching 
of Spinoza. 3 

There is no difference of opinion, therefore, as to the 
relative importance of the doctrines under discussion. 
Common consent seems to indicate and fairness seems to 
require that the doctrine of substance be the starting- 
point for the development, that Spinoza himself regarded 
it so, and that while the distinction of Def . 4 is a real 
one, and if maintained carries unlimited idealistic possi- 
bilities, yet its development is made impossible by the 
inherent contradictions to which it gives rise. 4 

1 Pollock's translation. 

2 Eth., )., 30. 

3 Cf. Erdmann's strong position, Gesck. d. Philos., 3d ed., ii., p. 59 
(sentence beginning, Was endlich den Spinoza selbst betrifft, etc.). This 
distinction is the basis of Martineau's classification of Spinoza's system 
as immanental rather than transcendental, although there are infinity-less- 
two transcendent attributes (Types of Eth. Theory). 

* That the balance of these two views of the attributes is not well 

35 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

IV 

Let us, then, attempt to interpret Spinoza in the terms 
of our general result — i. e.j the removal of the coDdition 
of perception in the definition of attribute, in such a way 
that the universe is looked at artificially and simply as 
an external fact with which our mind has nothing to do. 
Thought is not really external to the universe — other- 
wise it had lost an attribute — but thought is entirely 
correlative with extension and innumerable other at- 
tributes. The results in the direction of idealism are 
striking in the extreme. The infinite stages of intellect, 
each representing infinitely diversified orders, will be no 
longer necessary ; for they arise for the complete per- 
ception of the attributes, and the necessity for this 
perception is gone. And not only will they be unneces- 
sary, but they will be impossible. Thought is one of 
the attributes co-ordinate and correlative with all the 
others, each of which is infinite, and to multiply intel- 
lects to the extension of thought beyond infinity is to 
institute a disparaging comparison of infinites, which is 
impossible. Thought is limited to its peculiar sphere, 

maintained in Spinoza's mind is clear from his declaration of the indepen- 
dence of the attributes as perceived. They are to be thought of as in 
themselves individually, but yet as constituting substance. See Herbart, 
Metaph., i., § 41, and Fischer, Geschichte, i., pt. 2, p. 285. 

It is difficult to say just what Pollock means by idealism in this 
connection ; probably only a tendency to subjectivism. It is not "subjec- 
tive idealism which turns the world into a phantom/' for he expressly 
disclaims this for Spinoza (p. 49), although in so doing he is not true to 
his reasoning on p. 175. Nor is it the milder Berkeleyan type, for on p. 
170 we read : " It [Spinoza's system] is proof even against the objections to 
which Berkeley's Idealism is exposed." It seems to indicate only an undue 
and preponderating role given to the attribute mind. It is only necessary 
to interpret this in any one of the forms of historic idealism to see that 
Spinoza believed in none of them. 

36 



THE IDEALISM OF SPINOZA 

and we are freed from Pollock's charge that intellect 
is infinitely infinite. And in the other case, in which 
we found a passage to idealism, the same is true ; the 
sphere of existence now rolls on without being perceived 
in its entirety. The attributes, arranged in symmetrical 
and correlated harmony, fulfil the functions of their 
original endowment. Thought and extension assume 
form respectively in the modes or individuals of whose 
reality we are sensible. Modifications in one give modi- 
fications in the other through the bond of a living unity, 
and infinite forms of unknown existence repeat the story 
of the change. Nor is it necessary to infer that thought 
and extension are peculiarly related to each other or 
more intimately than others of the attributes. 1 We 
know only the two, but in the plane of intellect there 
may be figures, modes, which, while reducible to the 
ultimate equation of intellect, perceive three, four, an 
indefinite number of attributes, with as clear a con- 
sciousness, in as intimate a relation, as we perceive our 
two. 2 There are points, for example, at which the 
spiritual world interpenetrates the natural, and while 
our vision is dim and misty, we still may see that it 
runs parallel and very near to our own. 

But another piece of reasoning, and that in which 
Sir F. Pollock places most confidence in developing 
Spinoza toward idealism, remains to be considered, and 
to avoid misunderstanding, I quote the page at length. 3 
It reads: "Let us now turn to the main point of 
Spinoza's implicit idealism. What is the conclusion to 

1 See Tschirnhausen's objection, already referred to, Epist. 65 and 67 ; 
also Pollock, pp. 171, 172. 

i Spinoza's answer to Tschirnhausen. Erdmann, Gesch. d. Philos., 
3d Auf ., Bd. ii., p. 60. 

3 Pp. 175, 176. 

37 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

which it really points ? What would Spinoza have done 
if he had not been hampered by a remnant of Cartesian 
dualism? We have to observe that each attribute is 
complete in itself ; the possibility of mutual interference 
is rigorously excluded. The perception of things as 
extended is not a relation between the extended thing 
and the perceiving mind, for they are incommensurable. 
Every extended thing has its correlate in thought, 
whether that correlate is part of a conscious mind or 
not ; and when it is a perception of a conscious mind, 
the perception is a mode of thought, and nothing else. 
And the thing correlated to the perception is not the 
object perceived, but the organism of the perceiving sub- 
ject. The series of ideas or modes of thought is whole 
or continuous ; no other attribute has any part in it. 
How, then, can we say that thought perceives exten- 
sion? — or what ground have we for making extension 
co-ordinate with thought, and in some way which, 
nevertheless, is not causation, necessary to its manifesta- 
tions? Putting out of sight the supposed & priori 
necessity for an infinity of attributes, let us assume 
extension and all its modes to be blotted out of exis- 
tence. Thought and its modes will by the hypothesis 
remain unaffected ; every mental correlate of a material 
fact will be precisely what it was before ; the psychical 
order of things, ordo et connexio idearum, will be un- 
altered," etc. 

This page, I venture to say, not only disregards the 
principle of exposition we are employing, but more 
especially ignores the great doctrine that Pollock him- 
self places at the base of Spinoza's system — i. e., the 
doctrine of the identity of the attributes, the oneness 
of substance. The author does not, indeed, substitute a 
lesser doctrine for a greater, but he rejects the greater 

38 



THE IDEALISM OF SPINOZA 

and leaves its place entirely vacant. To support this, 
I wish to take the propositions of the page in their 
succession, insert in each, when necessary to make it 
true to Spinoza, a clause illustrating the doctrine of 
unity, and note, finally, the result on the conclusion. 
He says : " Each attribute is complete in itself; the pos- 
sibility of mutual interference is rigorously excluded ; " 
— because of the incapacity of either attribute to modify 
itself. Again : " The perception of things as extended 
is not a relation between the extended thing and the 
perceiving mind, for they are incommensurable ; " in- 
stead, the perception is a relation between the extended 
thing and the perceiving mind, arising from the capacity 
of mind to perceive the correlated modifications in ex- 
tension. Again : " Every extended thing has its corre- 
late in thought, . . . and the perception is a mode of 
thought, and nothing else ; " instead, this perception is 
a mode of thought which has its corresponding modes 
in all the other attributes, including extension. Again : 
" The series of ideas or modes of thought is whole and 
continuous; no other attribute has any part. in it;" in- 
stead of the last clause Spinoza teaches that all the other 
attributes have the same series. 1 Now the thesis : 
"^Putting out of sight," etc., with the conclusion, 
" thought and its modes will remain unaffected," etc., 
as above. The incorrectness of this conclusion is now 
apparent. Thought and its modes, instead of remaining 
unaffected, will be blotted out with extension and its 
modes ; every mental correlate of a material fact will 
disappear with the material fact of which it is the corre- 
late. 2 The ordo et connexio idearum will no longer exist, 
as it is one with the ordo et connexio rerum. The effect 

1 Ordo et connexio idearum est ordo et connexio rerum. 

2 Cf. Hellferich, Spinoza u. Leibnitz, p. 35. 

39 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

on the remaining propositions, which contain only an 
amplification of the conclusion, need not be followed 
out. Spinoza's true doctrine of the relation of thought 
to the universe is, I think, admirably brought out in 
Pollock's extension of the figure of the piano used by 
T. H. Huxley in his essay on Berkeley. It was only 
necessary for him to remain true to that exposition. 

Finally, we should be justified in claiming for Spinoza 
a realistic theory of knowledge, as Pollock inadvertently 
admits in the passage already quoted. Spinoza says dis- 
tinctly (Eth., L, prop. 30) : " For the true idea must 
necessarily agree with its object — that is, . . . what is 
present in the understanding as the object of thought 
must necessarily exist in nature." Again (Eth., I., 
prop. 4) he says : " The attributes are outside the intel- 
lect {extra intellectum)" And, indeed, to him the at- 
tributes are the measure of reality. Substance, or God, 
is absolutely real or infinite only in that it has an infinity 
of attributes. " The more reality or existence anything 
has the more attributes belong to it " (Mth. 9 L, 9). 
Herbart owes his doctrine of " reals," as he himself has 
shown, to this singular conception of Spinoza's; and 
Martineau declares that no pre-Kantian reader could 
have put any other construction on Spinoza's words than 
that whatever intellectus percipit is real. 1 

What Spinoza might have done under the circumstances 
is an entirely different question, and one with which we 
are not concerned ; much less are we concerned with the 
inquiry as to what he would have done if " unhampered 
by a remnant of Cartesian dualism." We must deal 
with him as a fact, with his system as he left it, and a 
statement of the result a change of conditions would have 
had upon his teaching can in no sense be called a devel- 

1 Study of Spinoza, p. 184. 

40 



THE IDEALISM OF SPINOZA 

opment. When Sir F. Pollock asks what ground we 
have for making extension co-ordinate with thought, he 
is asking whether Spinoza is right or not. This may be 
left to philosophers to discuss ; it is the business of the 
historian to record and interpret. 



41 



Ill 

EECENT DISCUSSION IX MATERIALISM 1 

There are phases of contemporary materialism which 
have little in common with the doctrines of ancient and 
mediaeval materialists, and which in point of subtlety 
and philosophical attractiveness are quite in accord with 
the advanced position of nineteenth century thought. 
The idealist of to-day flatters himself that he avoids the 
inconsistencies of Berkeley and Fichte ; so the materialist 
smiles at the mention of Priestley, D'Alembert, and Hol- 
bach. But these growths respectively in idealistic and 
materialistic thought have not been parallel. Idealism 
has tended in the last thirty years to withdraw its gaze 
from the thought-ultimate as a monistic conception to 
perception as a dualistic relation, that is, from cosmic to 
psychological idealism ; while materialism has tended in 
quite the opposite direction, i. e., from the crude postulate 
of matter in bulk to the search for an ultimate material- 
istic principle, that is, from psychological to cosmic 
materialism. Each has strengthened its flank, and the 
battle is now joined between psychological idealism and 
metaphysical materialism. 

Spiritualism has gained vastly by this change of base. 
As long as the ontology of spirit rested upon a dogmatic 
assertion of universal mind, there was no weapon at 
hand wherewith to attack the corresponding assertion of 

1 From The Presbyterian and Reformed Review, 1890, p. 353. 
42 



RECENT DISCUSSION IN MATERIALISM 

universal matter. I have as good right to assert a uni- 
versal as you have, and ghacun a son goilt is the rule of 
choice. But now that philosophy is learning to value a 
single fact more than a detailed system, and is sacrificing 
its systems to the vindication of facts, it is spiritualism 
and not materialism which is profiting by the advances of 
science. Materialism has appealed to the metaphysics 
of force, spiritualism has appealed to conscious process. 
Which is more in harmony with the scientific spirit of 
the day? 

The successive positions which modern materialism 
has taken in its necessary retreat into metaphysics, are 
interesting from a historical point of view. First it was 
matter and no mind ; then matter with a function, mind ; 
then matter, a force manifested in extension and mind ; 
then force, which is doubtless matter — but may be mind. 
First mind was brain ; then mind was a function of brain ; 
then mind and brain were manifestations of a material 
principle ; then the material principle became force, 
— which again may be mind. 



In stretching the lines of defence of the spiritualistic 
principle in psychology, we turn at once to the method 
of knowledge as a process, and we shall find it valuable 
for more than defence. For if we discover the indepen- 
dence of the thinking subject as regards the method, we 
may at once pass to its autonomy as regards the matter 
of the knowing process. That is, if we find a refutation 
of materialism in the psychology of knowing, we have so 
much the more ground for its refutation in the meta- 
physic of knowing, and the two considerations will 
present a consistent philosophy of knowing. What 

43 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

then is the materialist's doctrine of the method of knowl- 
edge? 

There are four cosmological doctrines of knowledge, 
arising from four types of world-theory, assuming that 
the parties to the controversy are only mind and matter. 
First, monism of thought ; second, dualism of thought 
and matter (or force) ; third, absolute phenomenalism or 
agnosticism; and fourth, monism of matter (or force). 
On the first hypothesis, perception is a purely thought 
relation, and by definition the materialist cannot accept 
it. On the second, we have a realistic theory of knowl- 
edge in which the thought element rests upon the ultimate 
presupposition of thought and the materialist is again 
excluded. Upon the hypothesis of absolute phenome- 
nalism the support is cut equally from both subject and 
object. If both be phenomenal, there can be no ques- 
tion as to which is real, and the materialist and idealist 
are both defeated. The fourth supposition, monism of 
matter or force, is then the materialist's only alternative, 
and the first problem we propound to him is this : Given 
matter or force, how do you account for thought ? Is 
mind a function of organized matter ? 

The grounds upon which materialists have been led to 
assert that mind is motion, or in general some function 
of matter, are the principles of cosmic economy and 
uniformity of law; and they are in part justified as 
scientific. But the law of cosmic economy is inopera- 
tive except when cosmic outlay is purely hypothetical 
and when the phenomena in question may be explained 
in terms of the known. And the law of the uniformity 
of nature rests upon the principle of the conservation of 
energy, in this case upon the position that mental process 
is caused by physical forces and vice versa. Just here 
we reach the question crucial to psychological mate- 

44 



RECENT DISCUSSION IN MATERIALISM 

rialism: Has physiological psychology led to the dis- 
covery of any process of transition from nerve force to 
thought? This may be answered unequivocally and 
emphatically no. 

II. Schiff's Experiments 

Much has been made of the experiments of Scruff, 
whereby he has shown that mental operations are ac- 
companied by a discharge of heat. 1 M. Luys says : 2 
" These experiments show us, on the one hand, that 
sustained intellectual work is accompanied by a loss of 
phosphorized substance on the part of the cerebral cell 
in vibration ; that it uses it up like an ignited pile which 
is burning away its own essential constituents; and 
that, on the other hand, all moral emotion perceived 
through the sensations becomes at the same time the 
occasion of a local development of heat." All this may 
be perfectly true and yet valueless for the debate. 
Every one admits that there is a loss of phosphorized 
substance during thought ; but this phosphorus is found 
passing off in the ordinary channels of the body (Byas- 
son and Beaunis), and this latter fact is used by Luys 
to prove the passage of thought back into a material 
form. In the first case, according to this ingenious 
thinker, phosphorus is expended during the intellectual 
operations, therefore (p. 78) "it (thought) uses it (phos- 
phorus) up ; " but phosphorus is also found passing 
from the body in the form of sulphates and phosphates 
and in increased quantities after periods of wakefulness 
and thought (Hammond), therefore (p. 70) these " serve 
as a chemical measure of the intensity of cerebral work 

1 Archives de Physiologie, 1870, p. 451. 

2 Brain and its Functions, pp. 78 and 79. 

45 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

done in a given time." But, although it is a pity to 
interfere with this twofold transformation of energy, 
we deem it a much more credible hypothesis that the 
phosphorus of the cerebrum is the phosphorus of the 
passages, and that there has been no transformation 
at all. 

On either of the hypotheses equally a development 
of heat is possible during the play of intellectual forces. 
If mind and brain are distinct, and brain a necessary 
organ of mind, heat may be the equivalent in whole or 
in part of cerebral activity. In short, the evolution of 
heat means only that molecular change is going on in 
the brain, and this is no very startling discovery. 

III. Bain's Sensational Equivalence 

But to bring the question of correlation yet closer, 
what shall we say to Professor Bain's " sensational equi- 
valent " ? He says : " that there is a definite equivalence 
between mental manifestations and physical forces, the 
same as between the physical forces themselves, is, I 
think, conformable to all the facts. . . . Mental mani- 
festations are in exact proportion to their physical sup- 
ports. There is a sensational equivalent of heat, of 
food, of exercise, of sound, of light." * Let us examine 
the facts. I sit idly in my chair ; the bell strikes one, 
and I hear it so distinctly that I am roused from my 
revery. I begin to read; the bell strikes two, three, 
four, and I am quite unconscious of the sound. Where 
is the sensational equivalent of sound? Gone with the 
passage of attention, a psycho-physical function. I plunge 
my hands successively into a basin of water ; to one it 

1 " Correlation of Nervous and Mental Force," in Stewart's Conserva- 
tion of Energy. 

46 



RECENT DISCUSSION IN MATERIALISM 

is warm, to the other cold. Where is the sensational 
equivalent of heat? Gone in relativity — partially, at 
least, a subjective estimation. I light a candle and my 
page is illuminated ; then a second, and the illumination 
is scarcely increased. Where is the sensational equiva- 
lent of light ? If it be said that changes in bodily con- 
dition alter the equivalent, we reply : How will you avoid 
these changes in establishing the equivalent ? It is like 
saying that conscience is uniform in its utterances, or 
would be if some were not perverted. We have only to 
ask : If some are perverted, where do you find the con- 
sensus of consciences which proves their uniformity? 
By actual experiment, the bodily conditions have been 
ruled out to a very great degree and a law approached 
which indicates uniformity of sensational contingence, 
but no such thing as sensational equivalence. We mean 
Fechner's logarithmic law of the ratio of growth between 
stimulus and sensation. Here is a uniformity of contin- 
gence such as we find constantly in nature in cases in 
which there is no proof of transformation or correlation 
of energy. My reading is contingent upon the burning 
of the gas, but who would say that the consumption of 
gas caused my reading, or that the energy of gas con- 
sumption passed into my thought ? So, if mind opera- 
tions be contingent upon brain operations, would we not 
expect uniformity in this contingency ? 

And the further parallel, drawn with great distinctness 
by Luys, Biichner, and Bain, between the healthy dis- 
charge of brain functions and the activity of mind, 
between the necessity for the regular feeding of the 
cortical cells and the free coursing of rich blood and 
the manifestations of clearness in thought, is just as 
true on one hypothesis as on the other. If mind works 
by cells, it works better by healthy cells, and if a whole 

47 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

brain is necessary to the normal activity of mind, the 
removal of part of the brain necessarily deranges mind. 
We fail to see wherein this aspect of the facts supports 
one hypothesis rather than the other. 

If the case is thus in reference to a sensation equiva- 
lent, it is more unmistakable in reference to a thought 
equivalent, unless we be able to resolve all mental pro- 
cesses into sensation; and even under this unfulfilled 
condition we must pass from intensity, considered as a 
force equivalent of stimulus, to consciousness as such, an 
altogether new and subjective property. This has never 
been done. The last utterance of Professor Huxley is 
this i 1 "I cannot conceive how the phenomena of con- 
sciousness as such and apart from the physical process 
by which they are called into existence, are to be brought 
within the bounds of physical science. Take, for ex- 
ample, the feeling of redness. . . . Let us suppose the 
process of physical analysis pushed so far that one could 
view the last link of the chain of molecules, watch their 
movements as if they were billiard-balls, weigh them, 
measure them and know all that is physically knowable 
about them. . . . We should be just as far from being 
able to include the resulting phenomena of consciousness, 
the feeling of redness, within the bounds of physical 
science, as we are at present. It would remain as unlike 
the phenomena we know under the names of matter and 
motion as it is now." And again : " It seems to me 
pretty plain that there is a third thing in the universe, 
to wit, consciousness, which, in the hardness of my head 
and heart, I cannot see to be matter or force, or any 
conceivable modification of either, however intimately 
the manifestations of the phenomena of consciousness 

1 " Science and Morals," reply to Mr. Lilly, in Fortnightly Review, Dec., 
J886. 

48 



RECENT DISCUSSION IN MATERIALISM 

may be connected with the phenomena we know as 
matter and force." We accept this opinion, however 
true it may be to Professor Huxley that he " finds even 
greater difficulties in exchanging the notes-of-hand of 
spiritualism for the solid coin of reality." Not only can- 
not consciousness be brought within the bounds of 
physical science, but physical science must be brought 
within the bounds of consciousness. Matter, force, 
physical science, as science, are nonentities outside 
of consciousness, that is, they are reducible, and the 
only irreducible we have left is consciousness, or 
thought. Professor Huxley may hold up his hands and 
cry, "I am an agnostic," if he choose, after admit- 
ting that "the arguments used by Descartes and 
Berkeley to show that our certain knowledge does not 
extend beyond our states of consciousness, appear to me 
as irrefragable now as they did when I first became ac- 
quainted with them some thirty years ago ; " but we feel 
compelled by logical consistency to admit that our one 
certainty not only is, but, by the necessities of conscious 
perception, always must be the existence of a mental 
world. 

The difficulties grow more insurmountable as mental 
phenomena advance in complexity. Bain, Lewes, Spencer, 
and Guyau have not shown that thought is a complex of 
sensations and much less that sensation supplies the forms 
of this complexity. Where, for example, is causation? 
Let Professor Huxley speak again : "If there is any- 
thing in the world which I do firmly believe in, it is the 
universal validity of the law of causation, but that uni- 
versality cannot be proved by any amount of experience, 
let alone that which comes to us through the senses. 
And when an effort of volition changes the current 
of my thoughts, or when an idea calls up another asso- 
4 49 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

ciated idea, I have not the slightest doubt that the 
process to which the first of the phenomena in each case 
is due, stands in the relation of cause to the second. 
Yet the attempt to verify this belief by sensation would 
be sheer lunacy." The judgment, attention, appercep- 
tion, the will, to say nothing of conscious continuity and 
personal identity, all stand unaccounted for. Not only 
must the materialist bridge the chasm to consciousness 
with supplies of new material, but he must elaborate this 
material into the rich texture of our thought and further 
he must build the loom and supply the motive power to 
weave these splendid tapestries. 

IV. Double Aspect Theory 

Whatever else consciousness be, it makes possible all 
experience. This is where the double aspect theory 
fails, and fails despite Professor Wundt's subtle effort to 
make it secure. If mind and matter are two aspects of 
one truth, what is this truth ? The spiritualist answers : 
" If they are aspects, they are aspects to me, that is, the 
me antedates the aspects ; but the me is itself an aspect, 
hence there is but one aspect." Professor Wundt re- 
plies : " Not so ; admitting the twofoldness of percep- 
tion, subject and object are both real in perception. 
But by the law of consciousness the object is the not-me 
plus the me. Subtracting the me, we have left the not- 
me unknown forever by the terms of perception, but 
a substance objective to the me. Now of the me we 
cannot say that it is a substance, for though it is known 
immediately, it is not known substantively. The me is 
known only in the manifestations of thought. Conse- 
quently no such substance as mind can be postulated, 
and if we be driven to assert a monism, from percep- 

50 



RECENT DISCUSSION IN MATERIALISM 

tion alone, that is, a substantive monism, it must be a 
monism of the not-me." Professor Wundt, it is true, is 
saved from this conclusion by the spiritual element in 
his psychology ; but if his premise be true that the me 
is known only as manifestation and the not-me is known 
in a complex with the me as manifestation, what hinders 
the inference that the me is a manifestation of the not- 
me, i. e., materialistic monism ? 

We said that Professor Wundt is saved from this con- 
clusion by the spiritual element in his psychology. Re- 
sulting from his detailed and labored analysis of mental 
processes, viewed from a physiological point of view, he 
finds two irreducible elements, sensation and will. He 
contends that from these two data the whole intellectual 
life can be built up. Of these that which bears more 
unmistakable signs of ultimateness is the will. Here he 
is in accord with the new spiritualists of England and 
France. But unlike them in that they maintain a knowl- 
edge of self as power, he is compelled to reconcile the will 
functionally with his position already described that the 
not-me is the only known substance. For this reconcilia- 
tion he resorts to the monadology of Leibnitz. Given 
the two subjective irreducibles, sensation and will, we 
find their simplest common manifestation in instinct 
( Trieb~) : instinct then is the bond of reconciliation, and 
is to be sought in the automatic habits of animals, the 
morphological properties of plants, and the chemical 
processes of the inorganic world, until we reach the 
atom, which contains potentially both ' the substantive 
not-me and the feeling and willing me. 

This position is strengthened by a resort to the Hege- 
lian logic. Professor Wundt maintains in his Loyik?- 
with Vacherot in France and the Neo-Hegelians in Eng- 

1 LogiJc, I, p. 32. 

51 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

land, that the " substance of things is the unity of 
thought," or, in his own words, 1 that " the fundamental 
laws of logical thought are at once laws of the objects of 
thought." Thus nature is realized thought and the sub- 
stantive not-me is, from an external point of view, " so 
expanded that it includes also in one substance-complex 
the psychic life manifestations : " while from an internal 
point of view, the not-me becomes a manifestation of 
thought. So we reach in the atom the substance of 
which mind and matter are the double faces ; or, to use 
his own words, " this substance in motion is the bearer 
of the psychic elementary phenomenon, instinct." 

To this very closely woven theory, several exceptions 
might be taken. In the first place, it might be denied 
that sensation, as such, is a mental ultimate ; there is a 
conscious form even in sensation. Conscious form, then, 
might be taken with will as our ultimates. We then 
might assert that instinct is not the synthesis of these 
ultimates, will and consciousness. Instinct, as Wundt 
defines it, may be both involuntary and unconscious. 

Again, upon this theory there must be a continuity of 
both aspects throughout the entire scale of plant and 
animal life as well as in the inorganic world; yet we 
have no evidence of any internal aspect when we pass 
out of the animal kingdom. There is an objective 
rationality no doubt in crystallization, but we can assert 
neither feeling nor will, and to admit the absence of 
either of these is to admit either that the inner aspect 
is absent or that feeling and will are not mental ulti- 
mates. Wundt refers the absence of consciousness to 
the absence of those conditions of permanent equilib- 
rium which are necessary to higher organized life, ad- 
mitting that inorganic matter has momentary flashes of 

1 Physiologische Psychologie, 2d ed., \\. t p. 452. 

52 



RECENT DISCUSSION IN MATERIALISM 

consciousness. If sensation is ultimate and necessary 
to instinct, there can be no such thing as " unconscious 
instinct elements." 

But, further, admitting for the moment the existence 
of unconscious instinct elements, thus allowing to the 
atom an inner aspect, what have we gained by its pur- 
suit ? Mind and brain are inner and outer aspects of an 
unknown substance. To explain this dual inherence, we 
postulate an atom having inner and outer aspects, but 
whose substance is unknown. If the atom have not the 
two aspects, we cannot reach them in man ; if the atom 
have the two aspects, we do not account for them in 
man. 

And yet again, admitting Wundt's position that nature 
is realized thought and the processes of nature processes 
of the realization of thought, we deduce two impor- 
tant inferences. First, complexity of organism is the 
reflection and not the cause of complexity of thought, 
the opposite of the position of materialistic evolution. 
Wundt has actually drawn this inference. And, second, 
since thought must logically precede its realization, the 
inner must precede the outer aspect, and our monism 
is, after all, a monism of mind. 



V. Maudsley's Organic Unity of Mind 1 

In an article in Mind, No. 54, Dr. Maudsley sums 
up the main argument of his Physiology and Pathology 
of Mind in three great points, which may be stated 
logically thus: First, the brain, as the organ of con- 
sciousness or thought, is capable of dual activity, this 

1 This section has been published substantially in Mind (London), 
October, 1889. 

53 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

duality making it impossible for- us to look for any unity 
in consciousness as far as the thought processes alone 
are concerned; second, the real unity of self is to be 
found in the affective or emotional life, which, third, 
finds its basal principle of unity in the organic unity of 
the body, i. e., in the nervous system. These points are 
closely interwoven, and present an account of the mental 
life to which spiritualists generally take broad exception. 
It is my purpose to indicate some considerations from a 
psychological standpoint, which tend to show that Dr. 
Maudsley's physiological data do not suffice for the 
interpretation he gives them. 

The facts bearing upon the dual nature of the hemi- 
spheres and the functional interpretation of them in 
regard to movement which Dr. Maudsley gives are 
conceded from the outset. It seems to be established 
that, besides the common functional activity of the hemi- 
spheres, that area over which they both have dominion, 
there is a something left to each alone, a large body 
of motor functions peculiar to each; and that either 
may dictate the performance of their common function, 
together with that which is peculiar to itself. It is 
when we pass on to consider " how the hemispheres act 
toward one another in thinking " (p. 166), that is, how 
they are related to each other as respects consciousness 
and its unity, that the question of psychological interest 
arises. 

In answering this question, Dr. Maudsley first cites 
the case in which we attempt to perform movements 
involving the separate activity of the hemispheres, as 
the performance of different movements with the two 
hands. He says (p. 166) : " If a person who is perform- 
ing one kind of act with one hand and another kind of 
act with the other hand, will endeavor to think of both 

54 ' 



RECENT DISCUSSION IN MATERIALISM 

acts at the same moment, he will discover that he cannot 
do so ; although he can execute the different movements 
simultaneously, he cannot think them simultaneously; 
he must pass in thought from one to the other, a rapid 
alternation of consciousness takes place. This alterna- 
tion, though rapid, is by no means simultaneous ; it is 
distinctly successive, since there is an appreciable pause 
in the performance of it." After excluding other alter- 
natives, such as the co-existence of different conscious- 
nesses, he concludes that " there remains the supposition 
of an alternating action of the hemispheres correspond- 
ing to the alternating consciousness." This alternation, 
he goes on to show, gradually yields, on the part of the 
hemispheres, through repetition and education, to their 
union in simultaneous activity as a single organ (166), 
but consciousness preserves its method of " extremely 
rapid alternations." The conclusion, therefore, as re- 
spects intellectual unity, is that we find no basis for it 
in the functional activity of the hemispheres. 

This conclusion may be true, but the analysis it 
involves of the psychological unity of the states involved 
is so meagre and false that we cannot take it alone with 
us in our search for the true principle of unity. By 
consciousness in this connection Dr. Maudsley seems to 
mean attention. It is true that I cannot attend to the 
two movements at once, that my attention alternates 
usually even when the movements are simultaneous, 
but it is not true that I may not be conscious of the two 
movements at once. Repetition tends to make them 
elements of a single state of consciousness, just as repe- 
tition tends to make the hemispheres a single unit organ. 
A simultaneous consciousness is not a "distracted or 
dual consciousness," but an integrated consciousness, a 
new state whose elements are drawn from previous 

55 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

states. Attention is a state of monoideism, but con- 
sciousness is not. 

Now this integration of states is possible only on the 
basis of a certain conscious unity as necessary to the 
mental life, as organic unity is to the members of 
the body in their variety of physical functions. If I 
move my right thumb to the left, is the movement my 
only consciousness ? Am I not conscious that it is my 
thumb, my movement? Are there not unnumbered 
organic, detached, stray peripheral sensations bound up 
with the act or with its very thought? And when I 
shift my attention and move my left thumb to the right, 
is there a pause in my consciousness of all these things ? 
Not at all ; I am just as conscious of my thumbs, of my 
organic affections, of myself, between the movements or 
during them. A simple change in my motor experience 
can in no sense be said to create a pause or break in my 
consciousness. Each hemisphere, instead of contribut- 
ing a separate consciousness, contributes an element to 
my single consciousness — in this case a motor element. 
And further, attention itself as a principle of active 
unity is dependent upon the complexity of the mental 
life. The selecting, relating, unifying, disposing func- 
tion of attention has been so emphasized in recent dis- 
cussion that it is needless to dwell upon it. 

I have thus briefly touched upon three elements of 
mental unity which analysis seems to give and which 
demand explanation whatever hypothesis we adopt. 
First, the subjective value of all modifications, both 
sensor and motor ; second, the subordination of incidents 
in consciousness, past and present, to the permanence of 
consciousness itself, which persists as the background of 
their flow ; third, the grasping and disposing movement 
of attention, which is always one. The class of move- 

56 



RECENT DISCUSSION IN MATERIALISM 

ments hitherto spoken of, L e., those which are controlled 
by the hemispheres individually, with no co-operation, 
bear only upon what are now called incidents and not 
upon the persisting aspect of mental unity. 

If the case rested simply upon this class of movements, 
Dr. Maudsley might strengthen himself by extending 
the difference of function not to the two hemispheres 
alone, but to each of the motor areas within each hemi- 
sphere. The centre for speech, for example, is probably 
distinct from the centre for the movement of the lower 
limbs. We can perform the two functions — say speak- 
ing and walking — simultaneously, but cannot attend to 
them simultaneously until a close association is brought 
about by education. Therefore, it might be argued that 
motor consciousness is a matter of successive states and 
lacks unity. From this point of view we have not 
two brains (centres), but, perhaps, a dozen. But the 
unity of the mental life, which the motor consciousness 
is here taken to represent, remains quite untouched. 

Dr. Maudsley next proceeds to consider those move- 
ments in which the hemispheres co-operate ; they " com- 
bine to dictate different movements of the two sides for 
a common end, just as the eyes combine the different 
visions of one object." The question is this: "From 
what higher source do the hemispheres obtain their 
governing principle of unity? How is it that when 
dictating different movements they yet have an under- 
standing to work together to a common end?" And 
his answer is again that the unity of the motor con- 
sciousness is . an educated unity, and that, like two 
acrobats, they learn to perform together "by much 
travail and pain." This is true and its importance is 
properly estimated; but it also must be criticised on 
the ground of what it leaves out. We are forced at 

57 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

once to inquire: Whose is the "end or aim in view," 
the " conception or foresight of the act, its ideal accom- 
plishment " ? Certainly not the conception of the hemi- 
spheres themselves, though the figure of the acrobats 
would lead us to think so ; for how could such a con- 
ception be acquired by the hemispheres before the action 
had been actually performed? And if thus acquired, 
how could they unite in it without a central bureau of 
consciousness where the progress of the co-ordination 
of movement might be apprehended and recorded? 
The conception which precedes all effort at motor 
execution is a fact or scheme of unity, mental unity, 
an ideal unity of the motor consciousness to which the 
complex activity of the motor apparatus is to be reduced, 
by long and wearisome effort. Here, as in the former 
case, we find no fault with the account of what takes 
place in and for the motor consciousness ; but we cannot 
see how this consciousness can be considered for itself 
alone in independence of the higher thought conscious- 
ness in which alone the idea of motor co-operation ger- 
minates and bears fruit. 

The other figure which Dr. Maudsley uses in this 
connection makes the case still plainer. He says the 
hemispheres are related to each other, in such co-ordinated 
movements, as the eyes are in binocular vision, their 
early binary images being reduced by experience to a 
unitary perception. But the eyes do not accomplish this 
themselves. Let us suppose the eyes to be the seat of 
consciousness. Now, either each eye has its conscious- 
ness, or there is a single consciousness for both eyes. 
If each has its own consciousness, neither eye could be 
conscious of its disagreement with the other and their 
results could never be reduced to unity. If there is one 
consciousness for both eyes, it is in virtue of this unit 

58 



RECENT DISCUSSION IN MATERIALISM 

consciousness that a unit perception is attained and not 
from anything in the eyes themselves; that is, it is only 
through the interpretation of a unit consciousness, in 
which both images as such are possible, that they can 
be reduced to the form of single vision. 

The mental unity to be explained is something more 
profound than the simple consideration of these motor 
performances would lead us to expect ; it remains to see 
whether the organic solution offered by Dr. Maudsley 
is adequate. 

The two great questions here involved are these: Is 
the " unity of the intellectual life based upon the unity 
of feeling," and " this again upon the unity of the organic 
life " ? These questions are so comprehensive and far- 
reaching that only a few general considerations can be 
advanced in this connection. 

1. The same line of argument by which Dr. Maudsley 
and others 1 prove the absence of unity in the motor 
consciousness, applies with undiminished force to the 
affective (or feeling) consciousness. Can we attend to 
two simple sensations in two peripheral organs at once, 
say a taste and the pain of a wound in the hand ? Not 
at all. The case is just the same as when we try to per- 
form two movements on different sides at once. There 
is the same alternation of attention until the sensations 
become united in a single attention-complex. The isola- 
tion of single affective states in our adult life is open to 
the same charge of psychological atomism as has been 
found attaching to the similar isolation of motor states. 
Indeed, simple feelings of movement are largely quali- 
tative affective states, and the argument from them 
applies to all states of the class. The feeling of effort 
which is bound up with movements seems to indicate 

1 Horwicz. 
59 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

a higher plane of intellectual unity, which the theory 
in question leaves quite out of account. 

2. We may well notice that neither the manifoldness 
nor the unity of feeling could be apprehended as such 
in the absence of a circumscribing consciousness which, 
through its own unity, takes it to be what it is. Sup- 
pose we admit that at the beginnings of life the inner 
state is simply an undifferentiated continuity of sensa- 
tion ; what is it that feels or knows the subsequent differ- 
entiation of parts of this continuity ? It cannot be the 
unity of the continuity itself, for that is now destroyed ; 
it cannot be the differentiated sensations themselves, for 
they are many. It can only be a unitary subjectivity 
additional to the unity of the sensory content, i. e., a 
form of synthetic function which reduces the many to one 
in each and all of the stages of mental growth. The 
relations of ideas as units must be taken up into the 
unit idea of relation, to express what modern psychol- 
ogy means by apperception or the "mechanical connec- 
tion " must become the " presented connection," to use 
the terms employed by Mr. Stout in Mind, No. 53. 

3. It is difficult to see how the higher intellectual 
unity, of which I have spoken, can find its basal princi- 
ple in the organic unity of the body. Admitting, with 
Dr. Maudsley, that mind exhibits organization, the pro- 
gressive organization of residua, we are never able to go 
outside of the unity of consciousness to find such men- 
tal residua. Indeed, there can be no such thing as a 
residuum, except as it is the same in nature as that of 
which it is a residuum ; and admitting further that the 
body is also an organization and an organization which 
proceeds in the most intimate and progressive parallelism 
with that of mind, we are yet unable to make mental 
organization a function of physical organization until 

60 



RECENT DISCUSSION IN MATERIALISM 

these propositions are established : (a) That the law of 
the organic and morphological growth of mind finds its 
proximate ground in the growth of body ; that is, that 
the methods of physical organization run also into mental 
organization. Now, as a fact, the great principle of 
mental organization, apperceptive synthesis, so far resists 
this interpretation. It seems, as Lotze says, to work by 
a method which is unique. (5) That mind in its pro- 
gressive organization does not exhibit stages or modes 
or form peculiarly its own. (e) That the two aspects 
of unity, physical and mental, are not themselves mem- 
bers of an underlying principle to which they are both 
secondary and which may be mind. 

Contemporary thought is tending, I think, to the 
recognition of the fact — as wholesome to the idealist 
as to the materialist — that the personality is one, that 
it includes mind and body, that we know these only in 
an apparently inseparable union, that mind is not mind 
without an object and that an object is not an object 
without mind, that a within is as necessary to a without 
as a without is to a within, and that rational unity lies 
deeper in the nature of things than either the empirical 
unity of the atomistic psychology or the organic unity 
of the nervous system. 1 

1 The question of psychophysical unity is taken up from the genetic point 
of view in the writer's Mental Development in the Child and the Race, chap. 
ix. § 3, chap. x. § 3, chap. xi. § 1, and the conclusion reached that the 
actual process involved is that of motor synthesis or " synergy " effected by 
practical adjustment of the motor apparatus and of the attention. 



61 



IV 

PROFESSOR WATSON OX REALITY AND TIME 1 

In a recent interesting article, Professor Watson aims 
to clear up the relation of time to the absolute. 2 He 
devotes most of his space to preliminary considerations 
in psychology and to the examination of Bradley's con- 
ception of reality and McTaggart's recent exposition of 
Hegel's doctrines of the absolute and of time. Professor 
Watson's own view of the time-process in its relation to 
the absolute is stated only as it is implicated in these 
criticisms, the positive treatment being reserved for a 
later article. The conclusion which he thus announces 
is in these words : " An absolute which manifests itself 
in the time-process, and yet is self -complete." This 
view, however, must not be considered as the traditional 
" reality-behind-appearance-view " of the transcendental- 
ists, as Professor Watson is at pains to say ; it is much 
nearer, as the present writer understands it, from the par- 
tial statements of Mr. Watson, to the later view of Lotze 
as contained in the Metaphysic (as contrasted with the 
Lotze of the Dictaten). This may be made plainer by 
further quotation. Professor Watson says : " If the 
absolute is self-complete apart from the time-process, it 
cannot be manifested in that process; if it is manifested 

1 From the Psychological Review, September, 1 895, pp. 490 ff. . 

2 "The Absolute and the Time-process," Philos. Review, July, 1895, 
pp. 335 If. 



PROFESSOR WATSON ON REALITY AND TIME 

in the time-process, whether it is self -complete or not, 
at least it cannot be self-complete apart from the time- 
process, but the time-process is essential to its self- 
completeness." " We reject as self-contradictory the 
conception of the Absolute as self-complete apart from 
the time-process." Lotze's view, with all its ins and 
outs, is well presented by Falckenberg in his recent arti- 
cles, and the pondering of his views, especially the dis- 
tinction whereby he finds succession necessary to an 
Absolute which is changing reality, while duration can- 
not be so considered, leads us to see that his problem is 
very similar to that which Professor Watson takes up 
when he goes on to say " we are immediately con- 
fronted by the difficulty that a world that is in process 
does not seem to be self-complete." 

It may not be fair at this stage of his discussion to 
anticipate that Professor Watson's solution will finally 
be similar to Caird's ; and it is difficult to see how he 
can finally get an Absolute which will be free from the 
charge of being " static : " but there are indications in 
this article that Professor Watson, who has the just 
reputation of being one of the ablest of the " Intellectual 
Idealists," is going to work that kind of thinking free 
from some of the weaknesses with which it has been 
beset in the eyes of those who are unable to find in the 
dynamic categories simply the " telling-off," by us finites, 
of a series of intellectual terms. 1 What I mean by indi- 
cations are these : Professor Watson in this article 
seems to recognize the need of some kind of an ontolog- 
ical construction of evolution, although there are indica- 

1 Since this was written there has been a considerable further develop- 
ment of voluntaristic and " pragmatic " points of view. The " dynamic 
categories" are given notable treatment in Ormond's Foundations of 
Knowledge (1900). 

63 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

tions, too, that he may fall back on the resource to be 
found in the subjectivism of the category of change 
(pp. 867 f .) . Further, Professor Watson shows a certain 
unexpected affiliation with Lotze again, in essentially 
agreeing that the question of metaphysics is "what 
reality is ; not how it is made." He says : " If it is asked 
why the Absolute reveals itself gradually in the finite, I 
should answer that the question is absurd ; we cannot 
go behind reality in order to explain why it is what it 
is ; we can only state what its nature, as known to us, 
involves." Does not this seem to " indicate " that there 
may be some further agreement toward a dynamic view 
of reality, in spite of Professor Watson's contention that 
reality must be self-complete in the sense that it is intel- 
lectually " constructible " ? Then there is a third " indi- 
cation." It is found in the good piece of psychology 
which Mr. Watson gives us in this article in treating of 
conception and judgment. This psychological digres- 
sion is not new in its teachings ; it is a series of views 
made very clear by the newer logicians. I myself de- 
veloped substantially the same views in the first edition 
of my Handbook of Physiology, vol. I., in 1889. But 
the use which Professor Watson makes of the " organi- 
zation view," as I may call it, of conception and judg- 
ment, is what I find interesting. I shall speak of his 
point against Bradley further along ; here it is enough 
to point out that Mr. Watson finds reality a function of 
progressive mental organization, thus denying the very 
possibility of a construction of reality apart from this 
organization itself. 

How then can the inference be avoided that the abso- 
lute, also, as real arises by a mental construction ? But 
we have no intellectual organization of which the un- 
temporal, the logically self-complete, the undynamic, is 

64 



PROFESSOR WATSON ON REALITY AND TIME 

a function. Hence we find ourselves in the dilemma of 
either making the absolute subject of all the temporal 
and dynamic predicates or of denying its reality. 

Professor Watson, it is true, appears to avoid this 
issue, and to content himself with the old antithesis of 
the intellectualists : " The consciousness of the finite 
presupposes the consciousness of the infinite " (p. 368), 
and " we are compelled to regard all finite or dependent 
being as presupposing a self-determining principle " 
(p. 368). But— -why are we? I, for one, am not. To 
be sure, if we make a logical antithesis with a suppositi- 
tious finite, defined as dependent, at one pole, we must 
go on and put a supposititious infinite at the other pole ; 
but it is going back to scholastic logic to say that either 
must then have reality, or gets it by this logical dialectic. 
As a matter of fact, when I ask my consciousness for 
the mental organization which constitutes the concep- 
tion "infinite," I do not find any such (and in my pri- 
vate view, neither is there any for the logical term 
" finite " — but this is by the way). If this be true, that 
there is no mental construction of any such object as 
the infinite or the absolute, how, on Mr. Watson's true 
psychology, can there be a function of it called its 
" reality " ? Or is this the exception which proves the 
rule, in the doctrine of reality ? 

In his preliminary determination of the Absolute, in 
the course of which the examination of Bradley occurs, 
Professor Watson makes good use of the " organization 
view " of reality, as I have termed it for brevity's sake. 
The aim of his criticism is to show " that reality in its 
completeness must be a thinkable reality." "If it is 
meant that there is in reality something which cannot 
be made the object of thought, because it is unthinkable, 
I do not see what kind of reality this can be." 
5 65 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

The argument is forcible, and, but for certain criticisms 
of limitation, it is, in my opinion, valid. It runs thus : 
If reality is, as a true psychology teaches, nothing apart 
from the mental construction or content itself which is 
said to be real, then there can be no room for Bradley's 
contention that the knowing or judging process always 
vitiates reality because it issues in a series of partial 
predications, none of which adequately expresses reality, 
and all of which are among themselves liable to contra- 
diction. This is, it will be remembered, the road which 
Bradley takes to show that all knowledge is appearance 
and issues in Schein. Now, says Watson, such a reality, 
separated from the organized content of knowledge, is 
quite supposititious : the very meaning of reality is psy- 
chologically just the mental organization itself at the 
different stages attained by progressive conception and 
judgment. So Bradley's distinction between that which 
would be real if we could get hold of it, and that which 
is not real because we have got hold of it, is throughout 
a false distinction. The criticism is valid, as I said, as 
against Bradley's impeachment of judgment ; but it is 
not valid as used by Professor Watson in his further 
positive contention that, if this be true, then reality must 
be capable of being thought, in whatever instance it be 
considered, and therefore, also, in the instance of the 
absolute. True as far as it goes, this latter view is 
inadequate psychologically, and proves in the sequel not 
only to leave other views open, but to allow a return to 
the essence of Bradley's contention. This I may take a 
little space to show. 

A reading of the recent new-school Logics, — Sigwart, 
Bosanquet, Bradley, and above all the later disciples of 
Brentano, — show us that there is partial agreement in 
regard to the predicate "existence." This agreement 

66 



PROFESSOR WA TSON ON REALITY AND TIME 

may be brought out in the light of the foregoing by say- 
ing that Professor Watson makes a simple conversion of 
a proposition which is (1), not universally true and is 
(2), not simply convertible. He says, in effect, mental 
constructions give us at once and ipso facto what we 
mean by reality ; hence all reality must be construed as 
an actual or possible mental construction. 

Taking the first member of the sentence first — it is 
not true as a universal. The Logics say differently ; and 
this is just the value of the partial agreement they are 
effecting as against the older interminable disputes as to 
whether existence added anything, when thought in 
connection with an object, to the mere thought of the 
object. The Logics say in answer to this question : No, 
the thought of existence adds nothing to the object as 
merely thought. And this is the valuable contention 
which Professor Watson enforces against Bradley. But 
the Logics then go on to say further : The thought of 
existence is a different psychological mode, nevertheless, 
and finds itself quite a different psychosis. The thought 
of a thing as existing has the mode, or is the psychosis, 
which we call belief ; and whatever it be that constitutes 
this " mode " different from that of the mere thought- 
content itself, it is a real difference which psychology 
must recognize. It is not all thought-constructions 
that carry the reality predicate ; it is only some of 
them — Sigwart would say, only those which are (ne- 
cessarily) so judged by us ; Bosanquet seems to wish to 
say, only those which carry some sort of necessity other 
than the necessity with which sensations break in upon 
us. But whatever the lines of distinctions be, they 
must be lines drawn by something else than thought; 
since the content remains the same — to be believed 
to be real or not — and existence is not a thought- 

67 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

predicate. The distinctions involved are really, in my 
opinion, distinctions of attitude, motived largely by 
differences of feeling. 

Furthermore — to take up the second point — even 
if it were true that all mental constructions carried re- 
ality with them, still such a proposition could not be 
simply converted. There is a more primitive form of 
consciousness, a mode of dealing with content, which 
does not involve existence as a predicate, but which 
nevertheless suffices for our activities in the presence 
of realities. "Reality-feeling," as I have called it, 
precedes belief ; and belief — the assertion of the 
reality-predicate — gives a return to the " reality- 
feeling " again, after a transition period of doubt, 
hesitation, suspension of judgment. Without taking 
space for going into points made elsewhere, 1 for the 
added reason, also, that they are in a measure my indi- 
vidual views, I may be content to put in evidence the 
fact that it is only part of the realities which we get 
that are thought-constructions ; many of them are felt 
realities. For example, does not ethical appreciation 
always run ahead of cognitive description? The aes- 
thetic and other "worths," of our system of realities, 
are as such not objects of thought. 

If these points be true, how can we say that the 
absolute must, in virtue of psychological deliverances, 
be capable of being exhausted in terms of thought? 

It would seem to be a competent statement, if we 
should modify the sentence, "Reality in its complete- 
ness must be a thinkable reality," of Professor Watson ; 
and say : Reality in its completeness cannot be merely 
a thinkable reality ; even though it be capable of being 

1 See my Feeling and Will, chap. vii. and the article " Feeling, Belief 
and Judgment" (from Mind, July 1, 1892), printed below in this volume. 

68 



PROFESSOR WATSON ON REALITY AND TIME 

thought, it must have in it the quality of moving the 
possible thinker in the way we call belief, ethical appre- 
ciation, etc. ; and farther, it may be so simple a thing 
to the consciousness in which we are supposing the 
appeal to do the thinking about it to be made, that it 
cannot be adequately thought at all, but rests as to 
certain of its apprehended aspects, in its own limpid 
immediacy. This would seem to be the conclusion 
from the appeal to psychology, if Professor Watson 
insists on making it; and such a simple "given" would 
seem in a measure to justify Mr. Bradley's insight 
in calling it "that" as opposed to "what." 



69 



V 

THE COSMIC AND THE MORAL 

In his paper on "Natural Law, Evolution, and 
Ethics," in this 1 Journal (July, 1895, p. 489), my friend 
Professor J. Royce presents under the caption of " Discus- 
sion " an interesting attempt to reconcile the " cosmic " 
with the " ethical process," apropos of the current discus- 
sions raised by Mr. Huxley's much-talked-of address ^on 
Evolution and Ethics. The development given by 
Mr. Eoyce is based upon the well-known distinction 
between the " world of description," and the " world of 
appreciation " of the same author's work, The Spirit of 
Modern Philosophy. He also refers to the article of his 
on " The External World and the Social Consciousness " 
in the Philosophical Review, "September, 1894. The 
currency already attained by these views of Mr. Royce 
makes it unnecessary that I should stop long on the 
preliminaries of his present paper. 

Briefly, the argument is this : All the formulas of natu- 
ral science are descriptions of phenomena which are held 
together just for the purposes of natural science. The 
growth of the thought of the objective is, genetically, 
the sorting out and grouping by these formulas of the 
items of experience which have two general characters : 
they are capable of " description," and also of " social 
verification." The description is necessary to their 
being statable as interconnected wholes or groups : the 

i From the Int. Journ. of Ethics, Oct., 1895. 
70 



THE COSMIC AND THE MORAL 

verification is necessary to their being the matter of 
science, L e., objectively there for the discovery of all 
men alike. The remaining contents of experience, not 
presenting these characters, are not thrown together 
under the statement of natural laws, or " cosmic pro- 
cess": they are capricious, in the sense that they are 
not describable; and they are subjective, in the sense 
that they are not verifiable. They are therefore set off 
over against the cosmic process : and when we come to 
see their character as involving desire, with certain ingre- 
dients of the desirable known as " the ideal/' the opposi- 
tion crystallizes into that of the " ethical " over against 
the " cosmic process." The distinction is, therefore, 
genetically one of the method and flow of experience ; 
it does not seem to require a corresponding division or 
dualism in the nature of reality itself. 

So far Mr. Royce's discussion seems to me to be very 
clear and, in its main contention, true. I think the dis- 
tinction in consciousness, when genetically considered, 
between the two points of view of " description " and 
"appreciation" is the root of opposition between the 
cosmic and the ethical. I am not able, however, to 
accept his tests of the objective ; and it may not be out 
of place, in view of the active discussions now going on, 
to examine his argument a little in detail. 

In the first place, Mr. Royce seems, after getting con- 
sciousness into this dilemma of the necessary antithesis 
between the "ought" and the "is," to find no psycho- 
logical way of getting consciousness out of it. He 
seems to say : " Remain a man of science and the moral 
sense is an illusion — remain a moralist and the man of 
science is a liar ! No man can be both at once. The 
only way that a reconciliation can be effected is by a 
philosophy which still recognizes the opposition, it is 

71 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

true, but is able to reinforce the statement of one side 
with profounder reasons." The ethical process it is that 
is reinforced in Mr. Royce's philosophy, and so the pro- 
test of the spirit is heard in the court of claims of ulti- 
mate reality. Science is tolerated, then, not justified 
ultimately. 

Now this theory, it seems, does not " reconcile " the 
two processes ; it merely gives us an interesting account 
of the genesis of the opposition. It seems to require, 
both in its account of the description of phenomena and 
in that of the meaning of desire, the same opposition 
between a unity which is merely recognized as given, and 
a unity which is demanded, although not given. Pro- 
fessor Royce leaves the desire urging on to something 
essentially indescribable and unverifiable. He says: 
" The object of our ideal is desirable not in so far as it 
is describable, and, again precisely in so far as it is not 
yet verifiable [italics his]. Herein, then, lies a double 
contrast between the natural fact as such, and the object 
of desire as such." With this account of desire we 
should expect failure to get any real reconciliation ; 
for it confuses the " object " of desire with the fact that 
with the object there is what we call, very obscurely 
often, the accompanying sense of an ideal. But when 
we come to distinguish between the object and this ideal 
accompaniment, we see that the object is both describ- 
able and verifiable ; 1 and then we see that through the 
attainment of it — if perchance we do attain it — we 
have brought the ideal which it stood for nearer to a 
similar construction. It, too, becomes now in so far 
also describable and verifiable ; now not, however, as 

1 I have developed elsewhere (Social and Ethical Interpretations, 3d ed., 
1902, sects. 242 f.) the distinction between "thing of fact " and "thing as 
object of desire." 

72 



THE COSMIC AND THE MORAL 

ideal, but as fact. The sense called ideal still goes on 
to attach to a further object of desire. But inasmuch 
as by the successful pursuit of this object, then and 
there, we have so far realized our ideal, in so far we 
have turned the " ought " into the " is " ; we have made 
natural history out of the objects of our ethical cravings. 
May not this suggest a real reconciliation of the two 
points of view, and not merely give an account of the 
opposition which remains to plague Professor Royce ? 

The sense of ought, then, from my point of view, is 
the anticipation of more experience, not yet treated 
under the rubrics of description ; but so far as it is identi- 
fied with any object of desire, so far it is thought to 
exemplify the canons of description of that object, as 
being most nearly the sort of experience that expectation 
is reaching toward. And natural science, the " cosmic 
process," is the same series read backward. It is experi- 
ence fully described, and hence rid of that coloring of 
expectation and desire which, when it was looked at the 
other way, made it the vehicle for the realization of the 
ideal. 

When we come to the metaphysical point of view we 
find the same criticism of Mr. Royce in order. What 
shall we say to a " reconciliation " which still, as I think, 
allows the two parties to the controversy each to estab- 
lish his own side by cutting off half of consciousness 
and throwing it away ? The positivist may say : " From 
profound philosophical reasons, I find consciousness jus- 
tified in its descriptions ; it is under illusion in its 
appreciations." And the idealist turns the tables, justi- 
fying himself also on profound philosophical grounds. 
The reason that they can do this is found in Professor 
Royce' s failure to find an actual identity anywhere 
between the experiences described and the good desired : 

73 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

instead of holding that the " is " is always, in so far, 
also the " ought " (that is, so far as it is the legitimate 
outcome of the cosmic process, i. e., is statable univer- 
sally, and is not a mere accident) ; but that, by the very 
movement by which consciousness gets it as an "is," it 
has to transcend it in a search for a further " ought." 
But if this is true, — if the series is one and the antithe- 
sis arises from the two points of view, " prospective and 
retrospective," from which it is viewed, — then a being 
who could hold both points of view adequately at once, 
would know no such opposition. He would " appreci- 
ate " the world as good without being under illusion, 
and also describes it as true without being a liar. 

This inadequacy, as I venture to think it, of Mr. 
Royce's paper, may be brought out also by the con- 
sideration of one other point. We may ask how one is 
to meet the objection that in giving a natural history 
of the distinction between the " is " and the " ought " one 
lays himself open to the charge of giving exclusive 
weight to the "is" after all. The very sense of appre- 
ciation is itself a cosmic product ; how then can it have 
any meaning apart from the details of history out of 
which it has arisen ? This very dilemma seems to me 
to be the fruitful source of confusion in Mr. Huxley's 
Address. He treats the "ought" in the body of the 
Address as in essential opposition to the u cosmic is " ; 
and in an appendix says it is nevertheless a variation 
which has been "selected." 

But if the moral sense is due to selection, we may 
ask, must it not have existed as a fact, a variation, say, 
before it was selected ? But if so, how can it as a fact 
have been in essential opposition to the series of facts 
which the theory of survival for utility presupposes? 
Now, I think Professor Royce's paper does not answer 

74 



THE COSMIC AND THE MORAL 

this question. He seems to leave a gap between the 
sense of the thing and the sense of its value; he says, 
however, that the sense of value attaches to all things ; 
and by making the essentially valuable aspect of the 
thing indescribable and unverifiable, he says in effect 
that it cannot be a natural history outcome. 1 

On the contrary, apart from details of natural history 
which I have discussed at length elsewhere, 2 1 .think the 
matter described by the " is " is the inadequate content 
of that which we feel " ought "to be ; and the descrip- 
tion of what " oughted " to be, i. e., that which was the 
object of. description of a past " ought," is what " is." In 
short, the " ought " is a function of a mental content, of 
a descriptive " is," — a motor function, I think, — and so 
like every other function of content has its own natural 
history as a single fact ; but its meaning is progressive, 
prospective, and the discovery of its full meaning still 
remains a question apart from its origin and place in 
evolution. 

I can say, therefore, with Professor Royce : " Novelty 
is a conditio sine qua non of all ideal value when re- 
garded from a temporal point of view; " but I must add 
that novelty, as such, is not the only conditio sine qua 
non. Rather is the full fact what he calls in his context 
the " interestingly novel." For an object of desire there 
must be enough description to make the thing interest- 
ing ; and this description is the thought content. Real- 
ize the desire, and you in so far add to the description, 
and so set another content for further desire. It is just 
this progressively built up content, viewed first from 

1 I know he gives it a natural history in the individual's private 
experience, but that seems to be, in a sense, apart from the cosmic 
movement. I have discussed this question in some detail in the paper on 
" Origin and Nature " cited below. 

2 See my Mental Development, pp. 341 ff. 

75 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

the point of view of novelty, then from that of history, 
then from that of novelty again, that the final identity 
of reality must rest upon. An all-comprehensive ex- 
perience would be appreciated as the all-good. So I say 
" nay ! " to this sentence of our author : " There is no 
chance of reconciling the metaphysically real and ulti- 
mate universality of the so-called cosmical processes, 
or processes according to describably rigid laws, with 
any even remotely ethical interpretation of the same 
reality." Rather must reality, when viewed metaphysi- 
cally, be both rigidly true and also divinely fair — so far 
as metaphysics may allow us to hold to either category 
as more than a device of human thinking. 1 

In conclusion, I do not think this is the only topic 
the discussion of which calls for a reconciliation of the 
same two points of view. I have developed, in a paper in 
the Psychological Review (Nov. 1895, " The Origin 
of a Thing and its Nature," reprinted in the volume 
Development and Evolution, 1902) a general distinc- 
tion of " prospective " and " retrospective " points of view 
under which that between " description " and " apprecia- 
tion " may be subsumed. In general, I may add that the 
distinction, genetically considered, is that which I have 
endeavored to set out in extenso, and in part from a 
biological point of view, under the terms Habit and 
Accommodation, in the work on Mental Development. 
Under these principles, respectively, the "is" and the 
"ought" find their genesis. And with this the main 
psychological position of Professor Royce is, I think, 
quite in harmony. 

1 This point embodies one of the essential approaches to the philoso- 
phy toward which the writer is now (1902) finding his personal views 
tending and which sees in the cestketic category, rather than in either that 
of truth or that of ethical worth, the real and final reconciliation. 

76 



VI 

PSYCHOLOGY PAST AND PRESENT 1 
I. Historical 

Modern psychology has had its principal develop- 
ment in Great Britain, Germany, and France. Ger- 
many has undoubtedly had greatest influence in this 
movement, considered in all its branches. The two 
main currents of development previous to the rise of 
the new so-called " scientific " psychology, designated as 
44 speculative " and 44 empirical," had their initial impulse, 
as well as their fruitful pursuit, respectively in Ger- 
many and Britain. German psychology down to the 
rise of the Herbartian movement was a chapter of 
deductions from speculative principles ; English psy- 
chology was a detailed analysis of the experiences of 
the individual consciousness. Kant, Fichte, and Hegel 
may sufficiently represent the succession in Germany ; 
James Mill, John Stuart Mill, Hume, Keid, and Bain, 
that in Great Britain. 

The work of Herbart and his school tended to bring 
a more empirical treatment into German thought, and 

1 In part, from The Psychological Review, July, 1894, being material 
prepared by the author (by request), in company with many others, in his 
capacity as "Judge of Award" for this subject, at the World's Columbian 
Exposition, for "A Historical and Educational Report," which the gov- 
ernment failed to publish. The report pays especial attention to the 
development of psychology in the United States. Later historical matter 
will be found in the writer's Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology 
under the various topics "Psychology." 

77 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

its significance was twofold: it excited opposition to 
the speculative method, and it prepared the Germans 
for the results of English analysis. It is further a 
legitimate supposition that the spirit of experimental 
inquiry which has swept over Germany in this century 
was made more easily assimilable to workers in this 
department, also, by the patient and extraordinary at- 
tempt of Herbart in his Psychologic als Wissenschaft 
(1824) to construct a "mechanic" and "static" of 
mind. 

To German thinkers also belongs the credit due to 
originators of all new movements which show their 
vitality by growth and reproduction, in that the experi- 
mental treatment of the mind was first advocated and 
initiated in Germany. But of this I write more fully 
below. 

The contribution of France to psychology has been 
no doubt of less importance ; yet the work of its writers 
has also illustrated a fruitful and productive movement. 
It has been from the side of medicine that French work 
has influenced current wide-spread conceptions of the 
mind. Mental pathology and the lessons of it for the 
theory of mental functions have come possibly most of 
all from France ; or at any rate — not to disparage the 
admirable recent work of English and German investi- 
gators — the tendency, so to speak, of the French treat- 
ment of consciousness has been to approach mental 
operations from the abnormal side. 

In America the influences which have tended to con- 
trol psychological opinion have been mainly theological 
on one side and educational on the other. The absence 
of great native systems of speculative thought has pre- 
vented at once the rationalistic invasions into theology 
which characterized the German development, and also 

78 



PSYCHOLOGY PAST AND PRESENT 

the attempts at psychological interpretation which fur- 
nished a supposed basis of fact to the idealistic sys- 
tems. In Germany various " philosophies of nature " 
sought to find even in objective science support for 
theoretical world-dialectic : and psychology fared even 
worse, since it is, par excellence, the theatre for the 
exploitation of universal hypotheses. But in America 
until recently men did not speculate much: and those 
who did were theologians. So naturally the psychol- 
ogists were theologians also. Jonathan Edwards had 
a doctrine of the agent because free-will was a question 
of theology. 

The educational influence has been auxiliary largely 
to the theological. The absence of great universities 
with chairs for research ; the nature of the educational 
foundations which existed under denominational control ; 
the aim of education as conceived in the centres where the 
necessity for supplying growing towns with pastors was 
urgent ; the wholesome fact for our civilization that the 
Puritans had traditions in favor of the school and of 
religious education — all these things made it necessary 
only that books sound in their theological bearings, or 
affording homiletic lessons in living, should be written, 
in a topic of such central importance. Even the term 
" psychology " is only now becoming domesticated : 
"mental" and "moral" philosophy were the titles of 
courses of instruction on the " soul." 

The type of philosophy which these conditions en- 
couraged was, it may easily be imagined, realistic ; and 
it is probably for the reasons which I have indicated 
that the Scottish Natural Realism was the American 
type of thought, and is now, except in the great univer- 
sity centres where systematic philosophy has become an 
end in itself apart from its duty to theology and educa- 

79 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

tion. So far as psychology was concerned, this realistic 
tendency was a great good. It led to a magnification of 
mental reality, to a reverence for the "utterances of 
consciousness," to a realistic interpretation of the "im- 
mediate knowledge of self," to the firm settling of the 
great "intuitions," cause, time, space, God, etc.; and in 
so far as this led to the direct examination of conscious- 
ness and to the testing of philosophical claims by con- 
sciousness, it prepared the way for a better and broader 
method. This tendency is marked even in the more 
influential works in theology. Channing and Emerson 
no less than Smith and Charles Hodge lay the corner- 
stone of argument again and again in the proof " from 
consciousness." 

This tendency to a psychological view of philosophy 
having its basis in the religious motive is seen also in 
Scotland, the home of realism: and it is there a part 
of the British method of thought which I have already 
spoken of. The works on psychology written in Amer- 
ica up to 1880 were, as we should expect, from the 
hands of theologians and educators, usually both in the 
same person ; for it is a further proof of the association 
of psychology and theology that the mental and moral 
philosophy in the colleges was almost without excep- 
tion put in the hands of the president of the college, 
and he was by unanimous requirement a preacher. So 
were written a series of works which are landmarks of 
American scholarship, props of evangelical theology, 
disciplinary aids of the highest value to the growing 
student, and evidences — to revert again to my argu- 
ment — of the two-fold influence I have indicated. Ed- 
wards's Freedom of the Will (1754), Tappan's Review 
of Edwards (1839) and Doctrine of the Will deter- 
mined by an Appeal to Consciousness (1840), Hickok's 

80 



' PSYCHOLOGY PAST AND PRESENT 

Mational Psychology (1848) and Empirical Psychology 
(1854), Porter's Human Intellect (1868) and Moral 
Science (1885), McCosh's Psychology (1887) and First 
and Fundamental Truths (1889) — these and other 
books like them show the psychology of America 
up to the decade beginning 1880. Speaking for psy- 
chology alone, it is easy to point out their merits and 
defects, not in my individual judgment, but as com- 
pared with the standards of the present year of the 
Exposition (1893). It is necessary, however, rather to 
show this by sketching the present and showing the 
new elements which have modified American work and 
whence they came. 

Coming to the present state of psychological thought, 
my task is made easier by reason of the divorce which has 
been forced between psychology as a science on the one 
hand and metaphysics on the other. As was said above, 
Herbart, while failing in his attempt to apply mathe- 
matics to mental " permutations and combinations," yet 
prepared the way for a new treatment of mental phe- 
nomena. After his attempt it began to be seen that the 
facts of conscious life were first in order of importance 
and were capable of treatment in a detailed way quite 
independently of the questions of Being, the Absolute, 
and the like. 1 The works of Volkmann, Lehrhuch 
der Psychologie (4th ed., 1894), and Lipps, Dei Grrund- 
thatsachen des Seelenlebens (1883) illustrate this. 

This was only to begin to do what had been doing in 
England since Locke. But the Germans now went 
further : they asked the question — which had been 
groped upon before by Descartes, by Leibnitz, and by 
Reid — how can psychology be a science when one of 

1 The reader may refer to the article on " Herbart and Herbartanism," 
by Stout, in the writer's Dictionary of Philosophy (1901-2). 
6 81 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

the evident conditions of the flow of mental states, 
of their integrity and their trustworthiness, the 
brain, is left quite out of account ? What is the law 
of connection of mind and brain? And is it possible 
to modify the brain and so to modify the mind? If 
so, then that great instrument of scientific work, ex- 
periment, may perform a part for the psychologist 
also, and his resources may thus be magnificently 
enlarged. 

This is the question of Experimental Psychology. 
It was answered in Germany in the affirmative. Lotze, 
in my view, deserves the credit of it, the credit of the 
great-minded constructive pioneer; and Wundt is the 
founder of the science in the sense that he first realized 
the expectations of Lotze's genius by actually planning 
and executing experiments on a large scale which made 
the affirmative answer an irreversible fact of history. 
Lotze's Medicinische Psychologie appeared in 1852, 
Wundt's G-rundzuge der Physiologischen Psychologie 
in 1874. Between the two, however, came Fechner, 
whose theoretical construction of the new work and 
its methods shows all the exactness of treatment of 
similar discussions of natural-science principles by physi- 
cists and chemists, and published the formulas in which 
he attempted to give universal statement to the dis- 
coveries of E. H. Weber on the intensity of sensation- 
states. Fechner's Elemente der Psychophysik appeared 
in 1860. 

Apart from its actual development this new method 
has profoundly modified the general conception of 
psychology even where its validity as a method has been 
denied. There has been nothing less than a revolution 
in the conception of psychology since the publication 
of the works just named. One of the motives of this 

82 



PSYCHOLOGY PAST AND PRESENT 

revolution thus came from Germany. The other — for 
it has two great phases — is due to English thinkers : 
the evolutionists, of whom Herbert Spencer (Principles 
of Psychology, 1855) was a pioneer. These two influ- 
ences are seen in two great points of contrast easily- 
made out between the psychology of to-day and that of 
yesterday in America. The latter I have described 
above: its two main characteristics, for purposes of 
the present contrast, are first, its character as so-called 
" faculty-psychology " ; and second, its character as hold- 
ing to what I may call a " ready-made " view of conscious- 
ness—technically an " intuition " view of consciousness. 
In opposition to these characters, current psychology 
is " functional " — holding to mental " functions " rather 
than to mental faculties ; and finds these functions to be 
" genetic " rather than intuitive — the functions " grow," 
instead of being "ready-made." 

The old conception of " faculties " made the different 
phases of mental process in large measure distinct from 
one another. Memory was a " faculty," a " power " of 
the mind; thought was another, imagination a third. 
The new functional conception asks how the mind as 
a whole acts, and how this one form of activity adapts 
itself to the different elements of. material which it finds 
available. The old terms " memory," " thought," etc., 
are retained; but with the distinct understanding that 
they do not stand for divisions in the mind, or different 
processes, one of which may be held in reserve when 
another is acting, etc. On the contrary, the process in 
consciousness is one ; and it is a psycho-physical process 
as well. The particular way in which this one function 
shows itself is a matter of adaptation to the changing 
conditions under which the activity is brought about. 
This transition is due in part also to the insight of 

83 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

Herbart, and in part to the demand for unity insisted 
upon by the evolutionists. 

The other point of contrast is equally plain. The 
" genetic " point of view in current discussion is opposed 
to the older " intuitive " point of view. The mind is 
looked upon as having grown to be what it is, both as 
respects the growth of the man from the child, and as 
respects the place of man in the scale of conscious ex- 
istences. The understanding of mental facts is sought 
in the comprehension of their origin as well as their 
nature; and the question of the validity or worth of 
" intuitive " beliefs in consciousness is subordinated to 
the question as to how the mind came to have such 
beliefs. 

Both of these points of contrast have been further 
denned by the progress of general philosophy in America. 
The demand for unity in mental interpretation has not 
come from naturalistic evolution alone (John Fiske, 
Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, 1874; Thompson, Sys- 
tem of Psychology, 1884) ; an equally pressing demand 
has come from idealistic metaphysics, which seeks for 
continuity in the series of animal minds as zealously 
as does the advocate of evolution. The influence of 
Hegel, as interpreted in the works of Green, and later 
in those of Caird, has been potent in effecting this 
transformation here. It is easy to see also that the 
same union of forces is quite feasible as respects the 
genetic development of the individual consciousness ; 
yet the new idealists have not done justice to this 
growing tendency in modern psychology, no doubt for 
the reason that idealism is based largely upon the analy- 
sis of the adult human consciousness. 

The line of cleavage, in the current discussions of 
general psychology, is drawn through the question of the 

84 



PSYCHOLOGY PAST AND PRESENT 

interpretation of mental " function " ; both sides claim- 
ing the same full liberty of genetic research and the 
same resources of analysis and experiment. The " As- 
sociationists," on the one hand, carrying on the tradition 
of the British empiricists, construe mental function after 
analogy with the interplay of physical forces in the 
objective world ; the " Apperceptionists," on the other 
hand, hold that mental function is in form an irreducible 
sort of process. Apart from original monographs on 
special topics, no work on psychology to-day commands 
much attention from general psychologists or from stu- 
dents of philosophy, which does not show itself alive to 
this main issue. The works of Lotze and Wundt have 
had great influence in America in the direction of this 
general statement of this problem in psychology: and 
it is especially the philosophy of Lotze which has been 
influential in replacing by a reasoned and critical phil- 
osophy the earlier theological dogmatic realism so long 
prevalent in the United States by inheritance from 
Scotland. 

On the literature of experimental psychology I can 
do no better than quote the following passage freely 
translated from the most recent 1 German work on 
general psychology, itself fully representative of the 
present state of knowledge — Grundriss der Psychologies 
by Professor Kulpe of the University of Leipzig (pp. 
27 ft.): 

" About the middle of the nineteenth century experi- 
mental and psycho-physical psychology began its course 
in Germany. While Herbart recognized a threefold 
influence of the body upon the mind, ... it was Lotze 
who made a thorough beginning in the employment of 
the data of physiology. Lotze, indeed, began his work 

1 That is, when this was written. 
85 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

with certain metaphysical expositions after the manner 
of the older German writers, and is very far from the 
recognition of a universal psycho-physical parallelism. 
But he does not hesitate to speak of the nervous condi- 
tions of mental processes, and he had the good fortune 
to suggest hypotheses of value where exact knowledge 
was wanting. The real foundation of Experimental 
Psychology was laid, however, by G. T. Fechner, who 
sought to carry out in a thorough-going way the con- 
ception of a functional relation between mental and 
physical processes. Although the mathematical form 
which he gave to this relation . . . does not hold, yet 
he gave to the exact science of psychology an extraordi- 
nary impulse, by reason of the new conceptions which 
he introduced, the methods of procedure which he both 
formulated and applied, the working over which he gave 
to the material he had in hand, and the observations and 
researches which he himself carried out. . . . The union 
of the experimental and psycho-physical was finally 
accomplished by Wilhelm Wundt ... in his classical 
Grundzuge der Physiologischen Psychologie (1874, 4th 
ed., 1893). By this unity of conception and by his 
comprehensive treatment of all mental phenomena . . . 
he has made the current phrase 4 new psychology ' appli- 
cable. . . . Wundt gave a further important impulse to 
the cultivation of experimental psychology by founding 
the laboratory at Leipzig in 1879, and establishing the 
PhilosopTiische Studien, a journal devoted mainly to the 
publication of researches from his institute. 

" Additional works may be mentioned of very recent 
date, which must be reckoned in their character as 
belonging to the modern psychology thus founded by 
Wundt, although they differ more or less essentially in 
system and in theory from him and from one another : 

86 



PSYCHOLOGY PAST AND PRESENT 

Hoffding, Psychologie in Umrissen, 2d ed., 1893, Ger- 
man translation from the Danish (English translation, 
1891) ; Ladd, Elements of Physiological Psychology, 
1887 ; Sergi, La Psychologie Physiologique (transla- 
tion from the Italian, 1888) ; W. James, The Principles 
of Psychology, 1890 ; Ziehen, Leitfaden der physi- 
ologischen Psychologie (1891; 2d ed., 1893); Baldwin, 
Handbook of Psychology, 1891 (2d ed. ; 1st ed., 1889-90) ; 
J. Sully, The Human Mind, 1892. 

" We may mention also certain periodicals which rep- 
resent the same current of psychological thought: Phil- 
osophische Studien, edited by W. Wundt (1883 ff.) ; 
The American Journal of Psychology, edited by G. S. 
Hall (1887 ££.) ; Zeitschrift fur Psychologie und Physi- 
ologic der Sinnesorgane, edited by H. Ebbinghaus and 
A. Konig (1890 ££.)." 

The part taken by American students in the present 
psychological movement is seen in the fact that of the 
seven works thus cited by Kiilpe three are by Ameri- 
cans, and to them must be added Psychology : Descrip- 
tive and Explanatory (1894), by G. T. Ladd, and the 
journal The Psychological Review, edited by J. McK. 
Cattell and J. Mark Baldwin (1894 if.). Another im- 
portant French work of recent date is La Psychologie 
des Idees-Forces, by A. Fouillee (1893). 1 The position 
of psychology in the American colleges and universities 
is described in a further section below. 

Other important contributions to Experimental Psy- 
chology — apart from the long series of monographs 
and research articles published in Germany and America 

1 Other later general treatises are Stout, Analytic Psychology, and 
Manual of Psychology ; Ebbinghaus, Psychologie (Bd. I.); Jodl, Lehrbuch 
der Psychologie ; Titchener, Experimental Psychology ; Miinsterberg, Grund- 
zuge der Psychologie (not, however, an exhaustive list). 

87 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

— are Helmholtz, Physiologische Optik (1867, 2d ed., 
1886, French translation), and Tonempfindungen (1863, 
English translation) ; Stumpf, Toyipsychologie (1883-90) ; 
and Munsterberg, Beitrage zur experimentellen Psychol- 
ogic, Parts I-IV (1889-93). 

The contribution from the side of mental pathology 
has become important on account of the rapprochement 
which has obtained in recent years between the alienist 
and the psychologist. The works of Pierre Janet, 
Automatisme psychologique (1889) and L'JEtat mental 
des Hysteriques (1892-93), x and of Bernheim, Sug- 
gestive Therapeutics (English translation, 1889), and 
Etudes de la Suggestion (1892), are most important. 
To them should be added the works of Ribot, Diseases 
of the Will, English translation (5th French ed., 1888) ; 
Diseases of Memory, English translation (5th French 
ed., 1888) ; Diseases of Personality (2d ed., 1888; Eng- 
lish translation, 1891), together with the many original 
contributions on the subject of hypnotism and aberra- 
tions of personality published in the Revue Philoso- 
phique (edited by Th. Ribot, vols. I-XXXVI, 1876 n\) 
and summed up in part in Les Alterations de la Per- 
sonam (1893 ; Eng. trans. 1896) of Alf. Binet. 

Further, the treatment of psychology in accordance 
with the British tradition, from the point of view of 
description and analysis, has been carried forward by 
Ward in the article " Psychology " in the Encyclopaedia 
Britannica, 9th ed. This type of research has also had 
its organ of publication in Mind : a Journal of Psy- 
chology and Philosophy, edited by G. Croom Robertson 
(vols. I-XVI, 1876 ff.) and by G. F. Stout (New Series 
1892 IT.). 

Finally, the genetic treatment of consciousness has 

1 Eng. trans., 1901 ; see also the later work Neuroses et les lde'es fixes. 

88 



PSYCHOLOGY PAST AND PRESENT 

been advanced by the works of Spencer, Principles 
of Psychology, 1855 (3d ed., 1880) ; Romanes, The 
Origin of Human Faculty, 1884-1888; Lloyd Morgan, 
Animal Life and Intelligence (1891) ; 2 and Galton, 
Pnquiries into Human Faculty (1883) and Natural 
Inheritance (1889). 



II. The Method and Main Divisions of Experi- 
mental Psychology 

To say that this is the age of science is only to repeat 
what is now trite and what no student either of philos- 
ophy or of history needs to be told. It • is the age of 
science because it is the age of devotion to science and 
of results in science. But it is a very different thing to 
say that this is the age of scientific method. Former 
ages have seen devotion to science and results in science, 
but I venture to say that no former age has, as an age, 
realized a scientific method. So prevailing, however, 
has the new method now become, and so customary to 
us, that it is only by historical study that we are able 
either to see that it is new, or to work ourselves into 
that degree of intellectual sympathy for the old which 
the earnest endeavor and unflagging patience of the 
heroes of philosophy in the past rightfully demand for 
all time. 

In characterizing our time by the word " scientific," 
as regards method, I mean to say something which 
is true in philosophy, politics, literature, as well as in 
the investigation of nature; and to dwell only on the 
department of thought in which such a method has 
been, and is, most difficult to realize. In philosophy 

1 And later, Habit and Instinct (1896). Here also belong the present 
writer's works dealing with Mental Development (3 vols.). 

89 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

it is not fully realized; and yet I believe that any 
class or school of philosophic thinkers who do not face 
toward the scientific east are steering up-current and 
will be absent when science and philosophy enter a 
common barge and together compass the universe of 
knowledge. For it is a part of the same conviction as 
to scientific method that neither science nor philosophy 
will ever succeed in compassing it alone. However 
painfully this advance may have been won and however 
loudly the dogmatists may deny its justification, it is 
sufficient here to signalize the fact that philosophy has 
in the present half century thrown open her doors to the 
entrance of critical and empirical methods, and that the 
results already accruing are evidence of the bigness of 
her future harvest. 

In general philosophy what has been called scientific 
method is better known, as I have said above, in a two- 
fold way, as empirical and critical. Retrospectively 
what we now have to rejoice in in philosophy is due about 
equally to two traditions, represented by Hume and 
Kant. The burden of current idealism, as far as it is 
worthy of consideration in our time, is to purify and 
conserve the work of Kant. And the burden of empiri- 
cism, under the same restriction, is to construct science 
within the domain claimed for it by Hume. 

In psychology the modern transformation comes most 
strongly out. Here we find an actual department of 
knowledge handed over to a new class of men for treat- 
ment, so remarkable is the demand for scientific method. 
It is no longer sufficient that a psychologist should be 
familiar with general philosophy and its history, or 
capable of acute logical criticism of systems ; it is 
necessary, if he would deal successfully with the new 
problems and gain the ear of the advanced philoso- 

90 



PSYCHOLOGY PAST AND PRESENT 

phical public, that he should reason from a basis of fact 
and by an inductive procedure. In short, he must not 
bring his philosophy as speculation into psychology, but 
must carry his psychology as fact, in its connection with 
physiology, anthropology, etc., into general philosophy. 

To illustrate this change, and its effect on general 
theories, recent discussions of the idea of space may 
be cited in comparison with the earlier and more specu- 
lative treatment. The reasonings of James, Wundt, 
Bain, Spencer, differ so essentially from the argumenta- 
tion of Kant and earlier men that it is almost impossible 
to find common ground between them. No one among 
those who accept Kant's results depends in our day very 
largely upon his reasons ; the question is shifted to 
another field. The physiologist has as much to say 
about it to-day as the psychologist, and the speculative 
philosopher has to recognize them both. 

This tendency of the day in philosophy may be ex- 
pressed by a chemical figure as a " precipitating " ten- 
dency. We are endeavoring, and successfully too, to 
throw all questions which are capable of such treatment 
to the bottom, as a precipitate — a psychological pre- 
cipitate — and are then handing them over to the psy- 
chologist for positive treatment. As long as our data 
remained in a solution of ninety parts water (which, 
being interpreted, means speculation), it was difficult to 
handle them scientifically. While admitting the utility 
and necessity of ontology in its place, current psychol- 
ogy claims that its place must be better defined than 
formerly it has been, and that whenever we can secure 
a sediment, a residuum, a deposit, apart from a specu- 
lative solvent, this is so much gain to positive science 
and to truth. 

One of the ideas which lie at the bottom of the so- 

91 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

called " new psychology " is tlie idea of measurement. 
Measurement, determination in quantity and time, is 
the resource of all quantitative science, and as long as 
such a resource was denied to the psychologist he was 
called a scientist only in his function of description and 
classification. And the justification of the application 
of measurement to psychological facts has come, not 
from theoretical considerations — for they were all op- 
posed, and still are, in many of the books of the new 
idealism — but from practical attempts to do what phi- 
losophy declared to be impossible. That is, experiment 
has been the desired and only " reagent." It is true that 
theoretical justifications are now forthcoming of the 
application of experiment to consciousness, but they 
are suggested by the actual results and are not in 
sufficient currency to counteract the influence of Kant's 
ultimatum, for example, that a science of psychology 
was impossible. 

By experiment in this connection is meant experiment 
on the nervous system with the accompanying modifi- 
cations it occasions in consciousness. Efforts have been 
made in earlier times to experiment upon states of con- 
sciousness directly. Descartes deserves credit for such 
efforts, and for the intimation he gives us, in his theory 
of emotions, of an approach to mind through the body. 
But the elevation of such an approach to the place of 
a recognized psychological method was not possible to 
Descartes, Kant, or any one else who lived and theorized 
before the remarkable advance made in the second half 
of the xixth century in the physiology of the nervous 
system. And even as it is, many questions which will 
in the end admit of investigation from the side of the 
organism are still in abeyance till new light is cast upon 
obscure processes of the brain and nerves. 

92 



PSYCHOLOGY PAST AND PRESENT 

A little further reflection will show us that the em- 
ployment of experiment in this sphere proceeds upon 
two assumptions which are now generally admitted and 
are justified as empirical principles, at least by the re- 
sults. They are both assumptions which the physical 
scientist is accustomed to make in dealing with his 
material, and their statement is sufficient indication of 
their elementary importance, however novel they may 
sound to those who are accustomed to think and speak 
of mind as something given to us in entire independence 
of organic processes. The first of these assumptions 
is this : that our mental life is always and everywhere 
accompanied by a process of nervous change. This is 
seen to be necessary to any method which involves the 
passage of mind to body or the reverse by the interpre- 
tation of effects. Which is cause and which effect, 
the mental or the physical change, or whether they 
both are effects of an unknown cause, is immaterial — 
to consider such a question would be to introduce what 
I have called the " speculative solvent." It is sufficient 
to know that they are always together, and that the 
change in one may be indicated in symbols which also 
represent the change in the other. The second assump- 
tion is based upon the first, it is that this connection 
between mind and body is uniform. By this is meant 
what in general induction is called the uniformity of 
nature. Any relation sufficiently stable to admit of 
repeated experiment in the manipulation of its terms 
is in so far uniform. Experiment would be useless if 
the relation it tends to establish were not stable, since 
the result of one experiment would give no antecedent 
likelihood as to the result of others under similiar cir- 
cumstances. Experimental psychology, therefore, rests 
upon the assumption that a relation of correspondence 

93 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

— be it co-existence or causation — once clearly made 
out between a mental and a nervous modification, it 
must hold good under any and every repetition of the 
same experiment under the same conditions. 

These two assumptions made, we have at once the 
possibility of a physical approach to the facts of con- 
sciousness. The result is a relative measurement of 
such facts in terms of the external stimulation of the 
nerves, in regular and normal conditions of the activity 
of attention. 

Further, it is apparent that such a means of experi- 
mentation may become available either under artificial 
or under natural conditions, according as the nervous 
stimulation is due to an external excitation, or arises 
from some unusual condition of the organism itself. 
All cases of brain or nervous disease, on the one 
hand, offer opportunities for boundless observation ; the 
mental functions showing changes due to the organic 
disturbances of disease. Here nature has arranged and 
actually performed the experiment for us; the only 
difficulty being the physiological one, that the cerebral 
states may be as obscure as the mental states which 
they are used to explain. All such cases of mental 
changes due to internal organic changes are classed 
together under the name of Physiological Psychology. 
It includes all questions which relate to nerve physi- 
ology and pathology, illusion, hallucination, mental 
disease, hypnosis, etc. 

On the other hand, experiments may be arranged for 
the normal stimulation of the sense-organs — skin, mus- 
cles, special senses — under artificial conditions, as ex- 
plained in part below. This is Experimental Psychol- 
ogy. On these lines modern scientific psychology falls 
into two great departments. As the normal prop- 

94 



PSYCHOLOGY PAST AND PRESENT 

erly precedes the abnormal, it is well to consider the 
line of researches based upon external experiment, con- 
fining ourselves to a more or less cursory view of results 
of historical interest. 

III. Psycho-Physics 

In attempting to give a succinct account of the growth 
and main results of what we have called external ex- 
perimental psychology, we must forewarn the reader that 
it is with very modest, and, it may be, minor facts that 
we are concerned. But this is a characteristic of the 
new method. Any fact in natural science is valuable 
for its own sake ; and it is only after there has been a 
vast accumulation of such facts, that broader principles 
may be inferred from them. The problems we are called 
upon to consider are such preliminary applications of 
experiment, and their full value for mental interpreta- 
tion is only now beginning to be apparent. 

We have already stated that the two conceptions of 
quantity and time, or duration, may be made applicable 
to facts of consciousness, thus giving us means of rela- 
tive measurement. According as we are dealing with 
one or the other conception — according as we are aim- 
ing at determinations in quantity of sensation, or in the 
duration of mental states, we may class experiments 
under two great divisions. All investigations into the 
quantity or intensity of sensations, go to constitute 
Psycho-physics, and all which aim at time determination 
go to make the department of the science called Psy- 
chometry. 1 Both of these branches of inquiry, it should 
be borne in mind, deal with the normal consciousness 
through simple excitations of the sense organs. 

1 Now more properly known as mental Chronometry. 
95 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

Psycho-physics deals with the measurement of the in- 
tensity, as it is popularly called, the quantity or mass, 
as the psychologist uses the words, of sensation. The 
conception of intensity needs no further explanation : it 
is simply the difference between the light of one candle 
and of two or more, the sound of a bell near and far. It 
is a property of all sensation. The problem which pre- 
sents itself is to reach a formula for such intensities in 
terms of the amount of stimulus required at the end 
organ to produce a given increase or decrease in con- 
scious intensity. To illustrate, suppose a candle illumi- 
nates my page to a certain extent ; how many candles 
would illuminate it enough to enable me to see twice 
as distinctly, or as distinctly at twice the distance ? Is 
there any general law of the ratio of intensity of 
external stimulus to intensity of internal sensations, 
which will hold good for all the senses? Or is there 
a different law for each of the senses ? Or again, is the 
entire case simply a matter of subjective estimation, 
varying with the mental and bodily conditions of the 
individual ? 

These questions were at one time hotly discussed, but 
have now been practically answered by the establishment 
of a single law of relation between stimulus and sensa- 
tion, which holds good for those of the senses found to 
be most easily accessible, has been partially proved for 
other classes of sensations, and is under judgment in 
default of sufficient experimentation for a remaining 
group of sense-experiences. Before entering more par- 
ticularly into details, however, it is well to define and 
explain several terms of current use among physiological 
psychologists. 

By excitation (or stimulus) is meant the external 
force which excites a sense organ, whether it be of sufn- 

96 



PSYCHOLOGY PAST AND PRESENT 

cient intensity to produce a sensation or not. The 
feeblest sensation which we are able to experience or 
feel from any sense is called the perceptible minimum ; 
the theoretical point at which such a sensation, when 
further enfeebled, disappears from consciousness, is the 
threshold of sensation ; and the amount of excitation 
which is just sufficient for the perceptible minimum of 
sensation, is the threshold excitation for that sense. For 
example, air vibrations are the excitation for sensations 
of sound, the feeblest sound which it is possible to hear 
under determined conditions is the perceptible minimum, 
and the number of units agreed upon — bells, tones, etc., 
— which are needed to produce this perceptible minimum 
makes the threshold excitation for this seuse. Further, 
the amount of excitation needed to raise or lower the 
intensity of a sensation by the smallest amount which 
can be distinguished and the corresponding difference in 
the sensation, are called the smallest perceptible difference 
in excitation and sensation respectively. Thus, if 1 unit 
be the threshold excitation for sound and an addition of J 
unit is necessary to produce any perceptible increase in 
the sensation, then J is the smallest perceptible differ- 
ence of excitation for sound. 

With these definitions in mind, we may turn to the 
problem of finding a law of measurement for intensities 
of sensation. The preliminary question as to a standard of 
measurement is already answered in the resort to experi- 
ment, viz., the standard must be a scale of excitation 
values, determined by physical measurement, as pounds, 
velocities, etc., etc. Given a threshold value of each ex- 
citation, we may double, treble, ... it, endeavoring to 
find some law of increase in the corresponding sensations 
whereby a corresponding internal scale may be erected. 
The first step is seen, therefore, to be the discovery of 
7 97 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

the perceptible minimum of each sense, which may serve 
as zero point on the sensation scale, its exciting stimulus 
being the unit point on the excitation scale. This brings 
the investigator to an actual research on all the sense 
organs in turn — experiments to determine the minimum 
of sight, hearing, touch, etc. The methods by which 
this is done are simple. Any device by which excita- 
tion may be lowered or heightened gradually below or 
above the threshold may serve the purpose. For touch 
and the muscular sense small balls of cork may be used 
— differing so slightly in size that when placed, say 
on the back of the hand in succession, the difference 
between the last one which is felt, and the next which 
is too light to be felt, is as small as possible. By run- 
ning the series in the reverse order, from weights too 
small to be felt to others barely felt, and by an equa- 
tion and average of errors, the point is determined 
where the excitation produces the smallest perceptible 
sensation. 

As simple as this procedure seems, the conditions are 
so complicated in some of the senses as to occasion great 
embarrassment. The eye, for example, is found to have 
a " natural light " of its own, arising from mechanical 
movement, friction, or chemical action, from which it is 
never entirely free, and the smallest perceptible sensa- 
tion of light must always include this natural factor. 
The conditions of the body before the experiment also 
cause great variations, as is seen in experiments on 
temperature and smell sensations. The threshold value 
for temperature is much higher or lower, for example, 
according as the earlier state has been one of higher 
or- lower temperature. The following table exhibits 
the results of Fechner's historical experiments on the 
perceptible minimum: 

98 



PSYCHOLOGY PAST AND PRESENT 

Perceptible Minima 
Touch .... Pressure of .002 — .05 gr. 
Muscular Sense . Contraction of .004 mm., right internal muscle 

of the eye. 
Temperature . . £° Centigrade (normal heat of skin 18.4°). 
Sound .... Ball of cork 1.001 gr. falling .001 m. on glass, 

ear distant 91 mm. 
Light .... Cast on black velvet by standard candle distant 
8ft. 7in. 

Space does not permit an examination of each of these 
determinations, and it is not necessary; for the actual 
numerical values are not of great importance. The fact 
that there is a minimum under normal conditions and 
its determination with sufficient accuracy to give ground 
for further inferences, is all that the theory requires. 
For that reason we pass on without giving other and 
later results, even where Fechner has not been confirmed 
by other experimenters. 

So far we have gained two points, i. e., the zero on the 
sensation scale and the unit value, a positive known 
quantity from the table above, on the excitation scale. 
We now cast about for means to graduate both scales in 
an ascending way by relatively equal values. 

It is a common fact of experience that excitations and 
sensations do not apparently sustain the ordinary relation 
of cause and effect to each other. Two candles do not 
illuminate a page twice as much as one; two violins, 
pitched in the same key do not double the sound of one ; 
and as intensities increase, it is a matter of ordinary 
observation, that very little variations are brought about 
by well marked changes in the stimulus. This result of 
general observation recurs to us as we advance in the 
consideration of the values on our scales, for we would 
expect from this rough judgment of daily life, that 
larger increments would have to be made' the higher we 

99 

LofC. 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

ascend on the excitation side to produce regular equal 
increments on the sensation side. 

This is confirmed by a further research undertaken on 
all the senses in turn, an experimental determination of 
the amount of increased excitation necessary to produce 
the least noticeable difference in sensations of the same 
kind. Let us suppose a given excitation for pressure, 
then increase it slightly until it is judged greater 
than before, determine the ratio of the increment to the 
former excitation, repeat the experiment with a much 
larger excitation, making the same fractional determina- 
tion and compare the results. It is found that the 
fractional increase in excitation necessary to produce 
a perceptible difference is constant for each sense. But 
this means that the absolute increase is not constant, but 
becomes greater as the intensity of the initial excitation 
grows greater. For example, if the initial excitations 
in two experiments be 6 and 9 grammes, a relative frac- 
tional increase of J would be in one case an absolute 
increase of 2 and in the other of 3 grammes. 

There are three general methods of determining the 
smallest perceptible difference for any sense, due in their for- 
mal statement and description to Fechner. I shall state 
these methods briefly in view of their importance in any 
work of this kind. They are known as the methods, 1. of 
least noticeable difference, 2. of true and false cases, and 
3. of mean errors. There is a fourth, of especial impor- 
tance in researches on sight, called that of mean gradations 
(Plateau); but it is not necessary to speak of it further here. 

1. The method of least noticeable difference is most 
direct. It consists in adding to a given excitation 
until the difference is barely perceived. The difference 
between the initial and the resulting excitation is the 
first determination of the quantity required. A plainly- 

100 



PSYCHOLOGY PAST AND PRESENT 

perceived difference is then added to the same initial 
excitation, and reduced till no longer perceived. This 
gives a second determination. The averaging of these 
two results is the correct value, which we may call DE, 
(difference or differential of excitation). Its ratio to 

the first excitation is expressed by the fraction ^-r;- 

The relative degree of sensibility for any sense, it will 
be observed, is inversely proportional to the amount of 
excitation required to give the smallest perceptible differ- 
ence in sensation, i. e., 

DE 

S (sensibility) =-pr-« 

2. The method of true and false cases consists in 
comparing two excitations (say weights), the subject of 
the experiment judging them to be equal or not. The 
number of true and false judgments is recorded and the 
ratio between them indicates the approach of the differ- 
ence of excitation to its minimum value. The relative 
sensibility again varies, as the actual difference between 
the excitations varies, and also directly as the number 
of true judgments (in relation to total cases), i. e. t 

S (== total cases.) 
N (= true cases.) 

3. The method of mean errors consists in comparing 
two stimuli (weights, etc.) and judging them equal, 
then in taking their real difference, positive and negative, 
in a great number of cases, adding these differences 
without regard to signs, and dividing by the entire 
number of cases. The mean error is thus arrived at. 
The sensibility is inversely proportional to the mean 
error, i, e., 

S = I. 

D (= mean error.) 
101 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

Proceeding by one or all of these methods, we estab- 
lish the smallest perceptible difference of excitation for 
each of the senses. The following table gives these 
values as they are now established, subject to revision 
for certain classes of sensation, especially sight, when 
the conditions of experiment can be made more free 
from error: 

Least Noticeable Difference 

Touch i 

Muscular Sense ^ 

Temperature ^ 

Sound |- 

Light jfo 

The values given, it may be well to repeat, represent 
the amount of a given excitation which must be added 
to that excitation to be felt in consciousness. For ex- 
ample, if the eye is already stimulated by a light which 
represents 1,000 candles, at least 10 candles (a frac- 
tional increase of t ^q) must be added to produce any 
perceptible increase in the intensity of the light. Any 
number less than ten could have no effect on conscious- 
ness whatever. And so with the relative values given 
for the other senses. 

Now to revert to the problem which originally con- 
cerned us, — it will be remembered that the two deter- 
minations already arrived at for all the senses are only 
steps in a process of measuring the intensity of sensa- 
tions in terms of external stimuli. So far we have 
determined the smallest perceptible sensation (giving 
us the starting points on our scale) and the smallest 
perceptible differences of excitation as we proceed up- 
ward in the graduation of our scale. The results of this 
second research may be stated in general language thus : 
in order that sensation may increase by successive equal 

102 



PSYCHOLOGY PAST AND PRESENT 

additions, their excitations must increase by a constant 
fraction of the excitation itself, i. e., by additions which 
are not equal, but which increase as we ascend the 
scale of intensities. For example, the successive ad- 
ditions to a sound, to be barely perceived would require 
the following series of additions to the stimulus : 

l+i 1+3+ 3 
1, — q— . o . etc-, or J, A if, etc., and the 



actual excitations would be the series 



1, 



4 

3' 



1_6 



64 

2 7' 



etc. 



This general principle is called the Law of Weber, and 
may be stated in a variety of ways, of which, perhaps 
the easiest to remember is this : that in order that sensa- 
tions may increase in intensity in an arithmetical series, 
their excitations must increase in a geometrical series. 
The law may be exhibited in a linear way to the eye 
in the following diagram (1) : 




PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

Let X represent a series of sensations 0, 1, 2, etc., in- 
creasing by a constant quantity from the zero point ; 
let the upright lines represent at each point the excitation 
necessary for the sensation of that intensity. Now by 
drawing the dotted lines parallel to X, it is seen that 
the succession additions made to the vertical are not 
equal, but grow constantly greater, i. e., for hearing, 
V v' 

y — y + g ' y" — y f + % » etc. Having erected these ver- 
tical lines by the law of increase given in the table, the 
curve abed, etc., may be plotted through their extremities, 
being the " curve of excitation." 



(2) 




13 



f 



etc. 



X 



The same relation may be shown in an inverse way, 
in (2) above, in which the scale of increasing excitation 
is given on the line X, the vertical lines representing the 
sensations increasing by a constant quantity. The curve 
connecting the extremities is now the " curve of sensa- 
tion," and is the obverse of the preceding. 

A further mathematical expression has been given to 
this law by Fechner. As we shall see below, it is open 
to some criticism ; yet it is ably defended, and whatever 
may be its fate as a mathematical deduction, the law of 
Weber as given above will not be involved. 

Assuming, says Fechner, that the smallest perceptible 
differences in sensation are equal for any value of the 

104 



PSYCHOLOGY PAST AND PRESENT 

excitation (an assumption which has no proof), and that 
very small increments of sensation and excitation are 
proportional to each other, we may throw Weber's form- 
ula into the following equation (DS being increment of 
sensation, DE increment of excitation, and K merely a 
proportional constant) : 

E 

in which all the quantities have been determined in the 
tables already given. Now considering this a differential 
equation, we may integrate by our calculus and reach 
the form : 

S = K. log E, or 

the sensation varies as the logarithm of the excitation, — 
the celebrated logarithmic law of Fechner, 

Considered under its more general form, as indicated 
in the principle of Weber, this law has an unequal 
application to different sensations. For sight, touch and 
hearing, it is fully established ; for taste and smell, it is 
still in doubt, by reason of the mechanical difficulties 
which these senses offer to experimental research. It 
applies under restrictions to our estimation of linear dis- 
tance, to our perception of the passage of small periods 
of time, and to our discrimination of local positions on 
the skin. In all cases, however, i'ts application is 
restricted within upper and lower limits of intensity of 
sensation. When too intense, the organism fails under 
the stimulus, reaching the limit of its normal respon- 
siveness, and when too faint, either the stimulus does 
not excite a conscious reaction, or the attention fails to 
discriminate the sensation. 

With so much in the way of exposition of Weber's 
law before us, it may not be out of place to indicate the 

105 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

principal criticisms which have been urged against it, 
both in its general result and in the method of research 
which it involves. To say that it has been criticised is 
to express very mildly the state of discussion which the 
last twenty years have seen, especially for a period after 
the publication of Fechner's great work. 

Both of the two assumptions made by Fechner, that 
the perceptible differences of sensation of the same sense 
are equal for all intensities of stimulus, and that the 
increments of sensation and excitation are proportional, 
are called in question. The results of late physiological 
work tend strongly in favor of the first assumption and 
it is probably safely established. The second, with the 
application of the calculus of differentials, is so plainly 
subject to criticism that even its strongest advocates only 
attempt to justify it by the results. Really it is only 
infinitely small quantities that we are able to consider 
differentials or proportional to each other ; while by the 
law of growth, arrived at by Weber, they are shown not 
to be proportional. This argument, adverse to Fechner's 
formula, is ably presented by Delboeuf. Another objec- 
tion is brought, also, to the doctrine of " threshold." It 
is claimed that there is not a constant threshold for any 
of the senses, but that the minimum of sensation varies 
with the condition of the organism, the concentration of 
attention, etc. If this criticism should be shown, how- 
ever, to be valid, it might still be possible to establish a 
table of variations or a co-efficient of " personal equa- 
tion " for individuals, and still preserve the principle of 
Weber. The objection formerly drawn from the fatigue 
of the organ under prolonged experiment, is now met by 
the principle called by Fechner, the " parallel law " : if 
we perform the experiments at very close time intervals, 
we may consider the degree of exhaustion as approxi- 

106 



PSYCHOLOGY PAST AND PRESENT 

mately the same for any two successive excitations. 
Any modification, therefore, which either excitation 
undergoes from the element of fatigue, is corrected in 
the ratio between that and the other excitation. For 
example, the smallest perceptible difference DA above 
an excitation A, reached by adding a new excitation B, 

T> 

is expressed by 'the fraction -r-: but any modification 

which affects both B and A to an equal degree does not 
alter their ratio. 

The objection that Weber's law is as yet of very 
limited range loses its force in the presence of recent 
work. The senses to which it applies are the most 
accessible ; but efforts are every day more successful in 
making the apparatus of experiment available also for 
the more complicated sensations. It should be remem- 
bered that all research involving physiology requires 
patient and prolonged experiment ; indeed it is remark- 
able that so much positive work has already been done 
in this connection. 

The philosophical significance of Weber's law is the 
ground of main interest to us. That it is an established 
law of the relation of mind and body as respects sen- 
sation, that it confirms the general assumption that there 
is a universal and uniform connection between the 
mental and the physiological — these points we are con- 
strained to admit, whatever be our more particular inter- 
pretation of the law itself. As to its meaning for our 
theory of the mind, and whether it has any such meaning, 
there is more room for difference of opinion, and three 
distinct interpretations are commonly held among 
psychologists. Each of these is advanced in answer to 
the question which Weber's law obviously suggests, i. e., 
why does not the direct relation of cause and effect 

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PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

hold between sensation and excitation : why is sensation 
proportional to the logarithm of excitation and not to 
excitation itself? 

The first of these interpretations, that of Fechner, is 
that Weber's law represents the ultimate principle of 
connection between mind and body: that they are so 
constituted as to act upon each other in a logarithmic 
relation. It is of necessary and universal application 
wherever mind and body are brought into organic 
connection. In short, on this view the law is strictly 
psycho-physical. This interpretation has been very gen- 
erally discredited, principally because it forbids all 
further research or explanation. Nothing is ultimate 
which may be explained, and if physical or mental reasons 
can be given — as the other two theories hold they can — 
for the disproportion between sensation and stimulus, 
then the assumption that it is ultimate is gratuitous. 
Fechner supports his view by two considerations, first, 
that the physiological theory, as stated below, is inade- 
quate, and second, that the law holds in cases of nervous 
exhaustion. The latter point is met by the consideration 
that in cases of extreme exhaustion the entire series of 
stimuli is intensified by a given amount throughout, and 
when the exhaustion is not extreme, it corrects itself by 
the " parallel law " spoken of above. 

Again, it is held, especially by Wundt, that the law 
is strictly psychological, that is, that the disproportion 
between sensation and excitation is due to the percep- 
tion or discrimination of the sensation. On this theory 
it is not the real sensation which is experimented upon, 
but perceived sensation ; and in the process of taking 
the sensation up into our apperceptive life it is modified 
as to its intensity. For example, the simple fact of 
attention to a sensation changes its intensity ; what effect 

108 



PSYCHOLOGY PAST AND PRESENT 

might not the act of directing the mind to it as is 
required in the above experiments, have upon it ? In 
estimating this interpretation, it may be said that it can 
never be critically established since we have no means of 
getting at the true worth of sensation except as it is 
interpreted in our attentive consciousness. By intensity 
we mean intensity to us, in our intellectual life and to 
speak of the intensity of sensations in any relative way, 
apart from the apperception and comparison of them, is 
to be unintelligible. Wundt, however, has an ulterior 
end in view — the support of his doctrine of appercep- 
tion — and he himself admits that he would not exclude 
the physiological interpretation. 

The third interpretation, which is probably the true 
one, makes the disproportion spoken of purely physiologi- 
cal. According to the advocates of this theory, the law 
of cause and effect does hold in this case, as in others, 
but a part of the internal cause is lost in the transmis- 
sion by the nerves, so that the true excitation at the 
brain centre is less than at the peripheral organ, and 
is in direct proportion to the intensity of the sensation 
which it causes. Briefly stated, the following facts 
tend to support this view: 1. the phenomenon of nervous 
arrest would lead us to expect a diminution of the stimu- 
lus between the sense-organ and the brain; 2. nerve 
action is dissipated in heat ; 3. force is lost in the excit- 
ing of the internal organ, hence, by analogy, we would 
expect the same in the stimulation of the centres; 4. 
the general parallel between electricity and nerve-action 
would indicate resistance to be overcome in the one case 
as in the other ; 5. on general grounds a loss of force may 
be expected in an extended or complicated mechanism. 

While not expressing a dogmatic opinion, yet a decided 
preference for the last view seems justified by the facts ; 

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PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

although Wundt has been recently reinforced by reliable 
results, of which a monograph by Grotenfeldt 1 may be 
particularly mentioned. 

With this hasty and imperfect exposition the recent 
work, technically known as Psychophysics, may be left. 
We now turn to the second great class of problems which 
arise from external experiment, t. e., those which are 
concerned with the duration of mental states, and whose 
investigation constitutes Psychometry. 

IV. PSYCHOMETRY (MENTAL ChRONOMETRY) 

It is only within the last thirty years that anything 
like exact and scientific efforts have been made to meas- 
ure the time or duration of mental states. The necessity 
of some such measurement first arose in astronomy where 
the most exact determinations of transit and other 
periods had to be made. A source of error was early 
seen in the fact that time was taken up in the trans- 
mission of the excitation of the retina to the brain, and 
also by the impulse (given to the hand to record the 
event) in travelling from the brain to the hand. This 
element of personal equation in astronomical work is 
elevated to a distinct problem in Psychology and its 
conditions are extended to include all mental states 
which have the physical basis necessary to the em- 
ployment of exact experiment. We therefore have a 
" science of the duration of mental states." 

Before the rise of experiment in this connection, 
desultory treatment had been given to the comparative 
rapidity or slowness of our " ideas " ; such questions, as 
to whether all " ideas " were successive or some simul- 
taneous, speculations on the cause of the rapidity of 

1 Das Webersche Geseztz. 

110 



PSYCHOLOGY PAST AND PRESENT 

dreams, etc. But being only general descriptions of fact 
and depending on individual experience and testimony, 
such observations were almost useless in general mental 
theory. With the positive work now done in this 
field, it is quite astonishing how many side lights are 
thrown on other questions and to what unexpected uses 
time determinations may be put. 

Proceeding upon the assumption already made and 
established in Psychophysics, we observe that any 
period of time which is occupied jointly by a physiologi- 
cal and a mental process, and which may be recorded by 
physiological movements traced by a time-registering 
apparatus, will involve as one of its factors the time of 
the mental process with its brain change. If then we 
have means of measuring the time taken by the physio- 
logical conduction alone, we may by subtraction find the 
former time. Now these conditions are realized in 
every instance in which we perform a movement in 
response or reaction to a stimulation from without. For 
example, suppose I hear a word and then write it ; the 
sensation of sound is the central link in a chain of 
nervous processes beginning in the ear and ending in the 
hand. From the ear the stimulus is transmitted to the 
brain, and from the brain the command to move is 
carried to the hand ; between these two processes, the 
third or " central " fact, sensation with brain change, has 
taken place. Now such a chain of events involving any 
stimulation and movement, and a conscious event con- 
necting them is called a " simple reaction," and the time 
that it takes is the " simple reaction time." The deter- 
mination of this time is the first problem of mental 
chronometry. 

The simple reaction time is determined for any sense 
with its reaction in movement (for example a sound and 

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PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

consequent movement of the right hand) by connecting 
the hand movement with a very delicate clock (chrono- 
scope or chronograph) in such a way that there is an 
instantaneous stoppage of the clock upon the movement 
of the hand. This is arranged by directing the person 
experimented upon to press an electric button when he 
hears a signal (say a bell stroke). Now let the bell 
stroke emanate from the clock as it reaches a certain 
indication upon its dial — and our experiment is ready 
for trial. The experimenter stands ready to press the 
button — the bell sounds — he presses — the clock stops. 
The dial face now indicates the time which elapsed 
between the actual sound of the bell and the movement 
of the hand. Now calling the time taken up by the 
nervous process to the brain sensory time (S), the time 
occupied with the nervous conduction from the brain to 
the hand motor time (M), and the time of the " central" 
event between them, perception time (P), we can ex- 
press the simple reaction time (R) in this equation : 

(1) E = S + P + M, 

in which S and M are purely physiological. 

This determination has been made by a great many 
observers upon three of the senses, sight, hearing and 
touch, with remarkable uniformity of result. It varies 
with different classes of sensations and with individuals 
from -J- — ^ sec. 1 

Recent experiments of Helmholtz and Dubois-Rey- 
mond have determined the velocity of both sensory 
and motor nerve conduction, so that we may substitute 

1 The writer's average time is \ — \ sec., after considerable practice. 
See, however, the papers on " Reaction Time " below in this work for 
additional facts and distinctions. 

112 



PSYCHOLOGY PAST AND PRESENT 

known values for S and M in the formula given above, 
as follows : 

S + P + M = .15 sec. (about). 
S + M = .06 sec. (about). 
P = .09 sec. (about). 

The word "about" indicates variations for the differ- 
ent senses, etc. For all the senses the general law will 
hold that the purely physiological time (S + M) is less 
than half of the entire reaction time. 

Having the simple reaction experiment arranged, we 
may vary the conditions in a variety of ways and thus 
arrive at the most favorable mental attitudes for quick 
reactions. In the simple experiment, the excitation 
(sound above) was expected, but the exact moment of 
its occurrence was not known. If a warning is given to 
the " subject " by a preliminary signal, the reaction time 
is shortened. Again, if neither the kind of excitation 
nor the time of its occurrence is known, the time is 
greatly increased. From these two variations we gather 
that the state of the attention has a great influence upon 
the reaction. As we would expect from our ordinary 
experience, when the attention is taken unawares a 
longer time is required to respond actively to external 
influences. 

Another exceedingly important influence is practice. 
This is due to the artificial conditions of all experiment, 
and the increased facility we acquire by personal adjust- 
ment. We react a thousand times daily under less 
artificial circumstances, and since the reaction time is di- 
minished by practise, it is probable that our customary, 
habitual, responses to stimuli of sense are more quickly 
performed than the most favorable experiments would 
indicate. 

Having now reached what may be called the " mental " 
8 113 



. PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

time (P) the question arises : how is this to be divided 
between the perception or apprehension of the sensa- 
tion and the volition to respond by movement ? Two 
methods of experiment have been devised for breaking 
up this period into its elements. The first consists in 
experimenting on cases of very close physical associa- 
tion — as between hearing and speech, right hand and 
foot, etc., where the reaction is almost automatic and 
the will element is practically ruled out. The subject 
agrees beforehand to repeat any familiar word spoken to 
him as soon as he hears it. Experiments of this kind led 
Donders and Jaager to the following principle : the rela- 
tive times of perception and volition depend upon the 
degree of physiological association between the receiving 
and reacting organs ; when this association is close the 
mental time is largely taken up with perception, when 
loose, it is nearly all occupied with volition. 

The other method, that of Wundt and Baxt, consists 
in repeating the excitation one or more times before the 
voluntary impulse for the reaction is given. Thus the 
perception element is repeated and the difference be- 
tween this time and the simple reaction time is the time 
due to the additional acts of perception. For example, 
let two equal and moderate excitations, say bell strokes, 
follow each other quickly, the reaction being made only 
after the second; we then have the equation (here p 
represents the perception of the first stroke, which car- 
ried no volition with it) : 

(2) R' = S + p + P + M. 

Now, repeating the experiment with only one stroke, we 
have as before : 

(1) R = S + P + M. 
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PSYCHOLOGY PAST AND PRESENT 

Subtracting (1) from (2), we have : 
R' _ R = p. 

Here R/ and R are readings from the clock. This gives 
a numerical determination for p. The volition time 
will then be P — p. 

From this latter experiment a curious result follows 
if the successive excitations are of very different inten- 
sities. If the more intense follows in fact, it is, never- 
theless, heard first, and the less intense, really first, fol- 
lows after; or they may appear to be simultaneous 
though really successive. This is the case in general 
whenever the attention is strongly drawn to the second 
stimulus and follows from the principle already spoken 
of, that the attention, when concentrated, diminishes the 
reaction time. This will be the case in general when- 
ever the diminution in the reaction time of the second 
exceeds the real interval between the two. The same 
phenomenon is experienced often when one is awakened 
by a loud noise. He hears the noise after he awakes, 
though it was the noise that awaked him. It simply 
means that because of the dormancy or preoccupation of 
attention in dreamland, the reaction time of the sound 
is lengthened into his waking consciousness, while 
the shock to the nervous apparatus was sufficient to 
rouse him from sleep. This shows also that the order 
of associated states in memory depends upon the move- 
ments of attention in the first experience rather than 
upon the order of external events. The fact is also 
important in astronomical observation; a new excita- 
tion to the eye, such as the appearance of an expected 
star on the meridian, is anticipated by the attention and 
given a reaction earlier than its true position would 
confirm. 

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PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

The distinction between perception and reproduction, 
that is, between the conscious form of a direct intuition 
and that of a memory picture, is very artificial, inasmuch 
as reproduced images enter in all our perceptions and 
influence their time. We have dealt heretofore with 
simple perception as if this influence did not exist, but a 
moment's reflection shows that it should be taken into ac- 
count in all time measurements. In the experiments of 
which I have spoken, in which attention plays a part, that 
is, in which the subject knew before he experienced the 
excitation, its nature and quality, the reaction time was 
diminished, for the reason that it was possible to call up 
a memory picture of previous experiences and hold it 
before the attention, in such a way that the voluntary 
impulse could be set in play almost immediately upon 
the discharge of the sensor centres. For example, if 
the subject expects the stroke of a bell, he recalls the 
sensation of a previously heard stroke, and the organs 
are in readiness to respond. So what we have called 
perception time really results from a diminution due to 
reproduction. The true time for perception must be 
obtained by experimenting with excitations entirely un- 
expected and the differences between the reaction time 
in this case and that of an expected excitation of the 
same nature, due to the influence of reproduction simply, 
is sometimes half the true perception time. 

The problem then arises to determine the reproduc- 
tion or simple association time, that is, the time which 
elapses between the full perception of a first image and 
that of a second which the first suggests. To do this 
we must first determine the time of a complete associa- 
tion reaction, that is, the time which elapses from (say) 
the hearing of a. word, as storm, and the utterance of a 
closely associated word, as wind. The association must 

116 



PSYCHOLOGY PAST AND PRESENT 

be spontaneous with the subject and the original word 
a monosyllable and very familiar. The uniformity of 
result is surprising considering the variety and indefi- 
niteness of our customary associations. Our equation is 
now (A representing the new element due to associa- 
tion) : 

(3) R'=S + P + A + M. 

Reacting again for the word alone without the associ- 
ated image, we have 

(1) R - S + P + M. 

By subtraction, A = R' — R, hence value for A. 

The average of experiments gives this value about 
| - | sec. 

These results hold only for close associations estab- 
lished by long habit, especially those dating back to 
childhood or early life. A third process upon which 
experiment has been employed is that of discernment, 
that is, the act of distinguishing between given images 
and indicating the distinction by choice. The excita- 
tion, say a red light, is agreed upon and is exhibited to 
the subject indiscriminately with another, say a blue ; 
the subject to react only when he sees the red. In this 
process, it is seen, two intellectual acts occur; 1. com- 
parison of the visible light with the reproduced image 
in consciousness, 2. a judgment as to their identity or 
non-identity, and these imply 3. the act first of all of 
simple perception and, 4. last of all the act of volition, as 
in the preceding cases. Letting 4 represent the whole 
distinction time, we have : 

(4) R' = S + P + D + M. 
Now reacting simply : 

(1) R = S + P + M. 

By subtraction, D = R' = R. 

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PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

Thus arrived at, the time of distinction is found to be 
for two indiscriminate stimuli, £■$ — -^ sec. I say for 
two stimuli, for the time is lengthened, as we should 
expect, when the possible choices are increased. For 
example, if we use three lights, red, blue and green, the 
time occupied in a true discrimination is longer, and it 
increases geometrically. Wundt experimented with the 
letters of the German alphabet, and others with both 
English and German printed characters. It is found 
that it takes about |- sec, to see and name a single 
letter, and that it takes longer to distinguish the German 
characters than the English. 

The time of the judgment has also entered into all 
our measurements heretofore, and it is impossible to 
isolate judgment as a distinct function for purposes of 
experiment. As an act in time it can be viewed only 
in particular cases and under prescribed conditions, and 
even then the time is to be considered relatively to 
that of other processes which are necessarily involved. 

Trautscholt has studied the time of the " judgment of 
subordination " from genus to species. A word is spoken 
and the subject reacts as he conceives a word in logical 
subordination to the given concept, for example, animal — 
dog. An element of association, which it is impossible 
to eliminate, also enters largely here. By the same process 
as before, we find the value of J (judgment) from the 
equation of the entire reaction, to be about 1 sec. ; it 
is slightly longer than that of the simple association. 
It varies also with the specific quantity of the logical 
terms. That is, (a) the time is longest when the subject 
is abstract and the predicate a more general notion 
(virtue — honesty) ; (b) shortest when the subject is 
concrete and the predicate particular (hound — Bruno). 

Besides these and other positive results, additional 

118 



PSYCHOLOGY PAST AND PRESENT 

important contributions to psychological science have been 
made. It may be well, in closing, to indicate some of 
the more general bearings of these time measurements ; 
resting satisfied, however, with their mere statement, 
since we have no space left for theoretical considerations. 

The researches already mentioned have led to the de- 
termination of the " span " of consciousness — the sum of 
possible presentations held together in consciousness at 
the same time. It has long been a disputed point as to 
whether presentations are ever simultaneous. It has 
been shown by Dietze that our sound consciousness can 
compass from 10 to 12 regular successive excitations by 
a single effort of the attention. The number of presen- 
tations for sight is probably much less — about 5 or 6. 
The most favorable interval between the sound stimuli 
is .25 sec. When the number is greater, they are thrown 
into successive groups of 4, 5, or 6 ; showing that the 
limit of a single attentive act has been passed and 
consciousness then adapts itself by a rapid shifting of 
its focus. 

Again, as is readily seen, this work has tended to the 
emphasizing and defining of the voluntary side of the 
mind, as given in acts of the attention. The results 
here alone more than pay for the entire work the 
researches involve. That the will is to-day a question 
of capital importance both in psychology and general 
philosophy, and that philosophers are hopeful and ex- 
pectant of results in the theory of our active life as never 
before under the lead of speculation, is largely due, I 
think, to the new psychology. Realist and idealist are 
alike tying their cables to the anchorage of mental 
" activity ; " and when the recent International Congress 
of Psychologists, in session in Paris, announced, among 
the topics which needed special and immediate investiga- 

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PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

tion, the " nature of mental effort," it was only an official 
expression of what was in the minds of us all. The 
experimental work described above has cleared up the 
problem of the attention in many of its conditions : its 
relation to the time-sense and the origin of the idea of 
time, its inseparable connection with muscular activity, 1 
its bearing upon intensities everywhere in mental experi- 
ence, its influence in our perception of the external world 
and of space — indeed one cannot arise from the study 
of physiological psychology as it now spreads out be- 
fore us the data of which we have only noted certain 
divisions, without the overwhelming conviction that it is 
upon the theory of mental effort in attention, with feel- 
ings of resistance, that the general psychology of the 
future will be erected. 2 

Such experiments also show the relatively reparable 
character of mental states in their dependence on physio- 
logical states, and at the same time the clear necessity of a 
circumscribing, grouping, and arranging form or scheme. 
In dealing with what I have called internal psychology 
as open to experiment, with abnormal and diseased states 
of mind, this question of unity and form becomes an 
open one ; but from the work now spoken of we have 
a certain emphasis of the modes of conscious activity. 

1 A recent and important fact lately brought ont is, that the reaction 
time is often shorter if the attention be directed to the reacting sense 
(hand) rather than to the receiving sense (ear). See subsequent papers 
in this volume on " Reaction Time." 

2 The prediction has now (1902) been fully realized in the extra- 
ordinary development of " motor " theories in connection with many 
general problems, and in the use made of the active functions in genetic 
psychology. 



120 



PSYCHOLOGY PAST AND PRESENT 



V. The Exhibits in Psychology at Chicago 

We are now prepared to consider the exhibits made 
in the interests of Experimental Psychology at the 
Columbian Exposition. It is evident that departments 
in which progress is in the main abstract and immaterial 
— such as the social, moral, and theoretical sciences — ■ 
cannot show their work to the eye, and they have here- 
tofore appeared at the world's great expositions only as 
their results have been embodied in things of practical 
life, — in education, and in institutions. It is, however, 
unfortunate that this should be so ; for the more ideal and 
spiritual aspects of a nation's life are just the aspects in 
which popular instruction is defective, and these are the 
aspects which should least of all be omitted in a survey 
of the conditions of present-day civilization. Yet it is 
so ; and it becomes easy to see, therefore, that it is only 
as psychology has become experimental and so has found 
it possible to state its problems and results in some 
degree in forms which allow of diagrammatic and mate- 
rial representation that it is able to " exhibit " itself. 
What psychology showed, therefore, at the Chicago 
Exposition was its experimental side. 

The exhibits bearing on psychology in its scientific 
aspects — as apart from the educational aspects, of 
which I shall speak later on — may be placed in order 
thus : 

(A) A collected exhibit made by the department of 
Anthropology, of which Professor F. W. Putnam of 
Harvard University was chief, under the immediate 
direction of Professor Joseph Jastrow of the University 
of Wisconsin, consisting of a Psychological Laboratory 
in operation with all its accessories. 

121 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

(B) A collection of instruments shown in the Ger- 
man Educational Exhibit under the heading "Psycho- 
physics." 

(C) Instruments shown in the general exhibit of the 
" Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Mechanik und Optik." 

(D) The private exhibits of particular instrument- 
makers. 

(E) Exhibits made by single universities, — those by 
the University of Pennsylvania and the University of 
Illinois. 

I may consider these briefly in order. 

(A) The Laboratory for Experimental Psychology, 
gathered by the Department of Anthropology (Ethnology). 
— This laboratory constitutes the first attempt ever 
made to exhibit at an international fair the state of 
progress of the world in this branch. When taken in 
connection with the other laboratories exhibited by this 
department, i. e., in Anthropology and Neurology, it 
may be accepted, in its main features, as an adequate 
historical index of the psychological progress of the 
nineteenth century. The general features of the work- 
ing laboratory cannot be better described than in the 
words of the director, Professor Joseph Jastow. 1 

The Psychological Laboratory. — " The object of this 
laboratory is to illustrate the methods of testing the 
range, accuracy, and nature of the more elementary 
mental powers, and to collect material for the further 
study of the factors that influence the development of 
these powers, their normal and abnormal distribution, 
and their correlation with one another. The laboratory 
is thus designed, not as are those connected with uni- 
versities, for special research, or for demonstrations and 

1 Official Catalogue of Exhibits, Department M, in which full de- 
scriptions may be found. 

122 



PSYCHOLOGY PAST AND PRESENT 

instruction in psychology, but as a laboratory for the 
collection of tests. As in physical anthropometry the 
chief proportions of the human body are systematically 
measured, so in mental anthropometry the fundamental 
modes of action upon which mental life is conditioned 
are subjected to a careful examination. In both cases 
the first object is to ascertain the normal distribution 
of the quality measured. With this determined, each 
individual can find his place upon the chart or curve 
for each form of test and from a series of such compari- 
sons obtain a significant estimate of his proficiencies and 
deficiencies. It should not be overlooked that mental 
tests of this kind are burdened with difficulties from 
which physical measurements are comparatively free. 
Our mental powers are subject to many variations and 
fluctuations. The novelty of the test often distracts 
from the best exercise of the faculty tested, so that a 
very brief period of practice might produce a more 
constant and significant result. Fatigue and one's phys- 
ical condition are also important causes of variation. 
It is impossible in the environment of the present labora- 
tory to secure the necessary time and facilities for 
minimizing these objections. They detract more from 
the value of an individual record than from that of the 
combined statistical result. So much remains to be 
done in this line of investigation that at every step 
interesting problems are left unanswered. But what 
has been done emphasizes the importance and probable 
value of further research. The problems to be con- 
sidered, when once the normal capacity has been 
ascertained, are such general ones as the growth and 
development with age of various powers; what types 
of faculty develop earlier and what later ; how far their 
growth is conditioned upon age and how far upon 

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PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

education; again, the difference between the sexes at 
various ages, differences of race, environment, social 
status, are likewise to be determined. The relation of 
physical development to mental, the correlation of one 
form of mental faculty with others, the effect of special 
training, — these, together with their many practical 
applications, form the more conspicuous problems to the 
elucidation of which such tests as are here taken will 
contribute. In addition to the interest in his or her own 
record, the individual has thus the satisfaction of con- 
tributing to a general statistical result." 

(B), (C), (D), (E) The Exhibits of (B) the German 
Educational Department, (C) the " Deutsche Gesellschaft 
fur Mechanik und Optik" (D) Individual Private Instru- 
ment-makers and (E) Separate Universities. — The. two 
German agencies mentioned as (B) and (C) send what 
may be considered as on the whole the best indication — 
when taken in connection with the special pieces of 
apparatus sent from German workshops to the collective 
exhibit of the department of Anthropology — of the 
application of modern mechanical skill to the construc- 
tion of instruments of the delicacy required for psy- 
chological experiment. These instruments are mainly 
adaptations of well-known principles, and often of well- 
known apparatus, used in experimental physiology, 
physical optics and acoustics, electricity, etc. The 
instruments shown by the German Mechanical and 
Optical Society are almost entirely common to psychol- 
ogy and other sciences. The pieces in the German 
Educational Exhibit are largely the special arrange- 
ments found useful in the laboratory at Leipzig, and so 
show very inadequately the real progress of the science 
in Germany. Yet they are of some historical interest. 
The collection is much less complete than that made by 

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PSYCHOLOGY PAST AND PRESENT 

the German instrument-makers in connection with the 
collective exhibit in the Department of Anthropology. 
In this connection it should be mentioned that the 
account given of Experimental Psychology in Germany 
by Professor Wundt in the official book, " Die Deutschen 
Universitaten " (ed. by W. Lexis, 1893), is not adequate 
if considered (and probably the author did not intend it 
to be so considered) as an exposition of the present con- 
dition of this science and the place it occupies in the 
German universities. 

(D) The private exhibits of individual firms should be 
noted in the attempt to make one's conception of psycho- 
logical activity complete. French exhibitors did not 
combine as the Germans did, and so lost both in effect 
and in local position. Yet much of the finest work is 
done in Paris, as is witnessed by the cases of surgical, 
physical, and psychological instruments grouped in the 
north end of the Anthropology building. An examina- 
tion of the catalogues of the exhibitors may serve for 
this class of exhibits, as the united catalogues of the other 
collections mentioned serve in respect to them. The 
German makers have done their work more largely in 
connection with great university laboratories, and so 
have subserved better the needs of particular students in 
solving particular problems in physics and psychology : 
the French, on the other hand, have found the demand 
more marked from the side of clinical .medicine and 
experimental physiology. 

(E) The separate university exhibits of the Univer- 
sities of Pennsylvania and Illinois were located respec- 
tively in the Liberal Arts and the Illinois State Building.' 
The aim of the former was to present a working labora- 
tory restricted to a small number of topics. This original 
purpose was not subserved through the failure to provide 

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PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

attendants to collect experimental data ; yet the arrange- 
ments for experiments in reaction-times and the visual 
sesthetics of form were instructive to visitors. 

VI. Psychology at the Columbian Exposition 1 

The division of topics in science at Chicago, whereby 
such subjects as Neurology and Psychology were in- 
cluded under Ethnology, has had in the event considera- 
ble justification, in spite of much criticism and some 
ridicule. For when we look at the way in which Psy- 
chology in particular fares, in comparison with its fate 
at other expositions, the difference is very striking. 2 
The principal, as it is also the official exhibit, in the 
department of Ethnology, is in the gallery at the north 
end of the Anthropological Building. It was gathered by 
Professor Joseph Jastrow of the University of Wisconsin, 
who was appointed assistant to Professor Putnam for 
this duty ; and no praise would be, I think, too high 
for this really admirable collection of apparatus, charts, 
etc., illustrating the principal problems and results of 
the " new psychology." Professor Jastrow's difficulties 
were great, and it is only fair to say that his success is 
also great. This main exhibit is displayed in three 
rooms, viz., a working laboratory, where a series of sense 
and memory tests are offered to candidates from the 
visitors in the building; an apparatus-room, which is 
well rilled with instruments topically arranged; and a 
third room partly devoted to the exhibition of graphic 

1 From the Nation, Oct. 26, 1898. 

2 The use of this principle of classification of scientific and other mate- 
rial in large groups, as against its arrangement in scattered exhibits, 
placed the Chicago Exposition, in my opinion, very far ahead of the late 
Exposition Universelle (1900) at Paris. 

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PSYCHOLOGY PAST AND PRESENT 

charts, showing some results of modern researches in a 
form easily taken in by the eye. This last feature is, 
however, very meagre, owing, I suppose, to the difficulty 
of getting authors to restate their results in such a form 
for a special occasion. Another room is given up to an 
anthropological library of books and journals, only mod- 
erately full and representative, and with a rather poor 
showing for Psychology. 

The collection of apparatus is probably the most 
complete, as a whole, that has ever been made, not- 
withstanding some obvious deficiencies. For example, 
instruments for sound and tone-experiments are almost 
altogether wanting ; and if this omission is excusable in 
the working laboratory, considering the incessant noises 
made by the busy fair-goers, it is unaccountable in a 
simple apparatus exhibit, except on the supposition that 
makers and owners could not be persuaded to contribute. 
The pieces for sight, muscle-sense, and color-sense are 
well chosen, and so is the apparatus for demonstrating 
the laws of reaction-time and other special psychophysi- 
cal principles. Of course, it is impossible, without 
becoming too technical, to give a detailed account of 
these instruments. 

In the testing-room, a series of interesting sense and 
memory tests are given to all comers. The educative 
value to those taking them, and to the public generally, 
is probably their greatest value under the circumstances, 
which are not conducive to scientific accuracy. More 
may be expected, however, from a series of results 
obtained from different colleges in this country, where 
the same tests were given to groups of students by 
competent instructors before the Fair opened. These 
results, together with a detailed description of the tests 
themselves, will, it is hoped, be published by Dr. Jastrow. 

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J 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

The arrangements for administering these tests, I may 
add, exhibit much ingenuity. 1 

In conclusion, I may be allowed a word of reflection 
on the present state of experimental psychology so far as 
it is revealed in these exhibits. Most of the separate 
instruments are contrivances of particular men for the 
investigation of particular problems. The science has 
not yet reached the stage of real demonstration — the 
stage at which its acknowledged results may be stated 
under general principles of critical value, whose truth 
may be shown by a few representative experiments. 
No doubt we shall, in the future, have more demonstra- 
tion apparatus of recognized value — apparatus indis- 
pensable to teachers in class instruction. But it must 
be admitted that instruction in this field is now very 
haphazard, and each teacher is a law unto himself, 
•both as to what he shall teach and as to how he shall 
teach it. 

Another reflection is more encouraging. It arises from 
the very extraordinary display made by American in- 
stitutions and professors as compared with those from 
abroad. And this discrepancy cannot be attributed to 
lack of interest on the part of the foreign psychologists, 
for, despite such lack, it is still true that this continent 
has to-day more chairs for the prosecution of research 
and teaching than all the world besides, and as many 
laboratories.- The actual results so far attained dispel 
all fear that the movement is a mistake or a fad ; and, 
with a continuation of the liberal treatment already 
given to the subject by the universities, great things 
may be expected in the future. 

1 For detailed accounts of psychological apparatus to date (1901), see 
Baldwin's Diet. o/Philos. and Psychol., I., " Laboratory and Apparatus," 
and on tests, see ibid. II., "Tests" (psychophysical.) 

128 



PSYCHOLOGY PAST AND PRESENT 

VII. Educational 

The educational aspects of the new work in psychology 
are of great importance. It is evident that education 
has two claims to make upon this study ; one of these 
claims the old psychology aimed to meet, the other it 
was incapable of meeting. The first of these two duties 
of psychology to education is this : it should take its 
place as a factor in liberal collegiate culture in both of 
the functions which a great branch of learning serves in 
the university curriculum, L e., undergraduate discipline 
and instruction, and post-graduate research discipline. 

The older psychology, especially in America where it 
was hampered by the conditions pointed out in an earlier 
section, did, as I say, aim to instruct undergraduates. 
But even in this it was a means to another end : it was 
propaedeutic to a philosophy and to a theology, both of 
which, as far as their demands upon " mental science " 
were concerned, were dogmatic and illiberal. But the 
graduate disciplinary function was never served in any 
sense by the faculty psychology nor by the philosophy 
founded upon it in America. 

The second great educative function of psychology is 
this : it Should mould and inform educational theory by 
affording a view of mind and body in their united growth 
and mutual dependence. Education is a process of the 
development of personality under the best attainable 
conditions; and psychology is the science which aims 
to determine the nature of such personality in its varied 
stages of growth, and the conditions under which its full 
development may be most healthfully and sturdily nour- 
ished. One of the first duties of psychology, therefore, 
is to criticise systems of education, to point out " the 
better way " in education everywhere, and to take no 
9 129 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

rest until the better way is everywhere adopted. This 
duty the old psychology did not realize ; indeed, by its 
method and results it was cut off: from the realization of 
it. It shall now be my aim to show briefly how con- 
temporary psychology is addressing herself to all these 
undertakings. 

(a) Psychology as Research Discipline. — I begin with 
this point because it is the most striking fact about the 
present state of psychology in all countries where the 
experimental idea has been given entertainment. Prob- 
ably students and general readers hear more about " re- 
search " in connection with psychology than with any 
other branch. And it is odd — indeed to workers in 
other departments amusing — that all this claim to re- 
search ability, and talk about " original contributions to 
knowledge," is by professors who are yet smooth-faced 
and generally quite inexperienced in university affairs. 
A physicist who makes many contributions to knowl- 
edge is rare, but the "new psychology" has two men 
of research to every competent college instructor in its 
ranks. 

This, I take it, is a hopeful and encouraging state of 
things, and has its origin in two influences : first, the 
new impulse has come from Germany, where the univer- 
sity function corresponds very nearly to the graduate- 
discipline function in the few American institutions 
where graduate work is encouraged ; and second, because 
the actual state of the subject is such that research is a 
matter of comparatively less difficulty than in the older 
scientific branches. Yet the actual value of this condi- 
tion of things in the permanent development of the sub- 
ject must be held to be disciplinary and educational ; for 
the more serious and philosophical of the psychologists 
do not expect these first results of the new methods to 

130 



PSYCHOLOGY PAST AND PRESENT 

be revolutionary in their value, nor have the researches 
so far published been much more than suggestions of 
what may be done when the method is held under better 
control and those who apply it have had adequate disci- 
pline and training in its use. 

Accordingly, in my view, the very marked tendency to 
" research. " evident in the management of the new labo- 
ratory foundations of the colleges in this country is of 
main value as offering training to the future instruc- 
tors in psychology throughout the land, rather than 
as offering contributions to knowledge. The students 
in these laboratories come largely from colleges where 
experimental psychology is unprovided for or held 
up for criticism by professors of philosophy. The 
utilization of their results is, in most cases, manifestly 
impossible. 

The research discipline offered by graduate work is 
indispensable, however, as discipline, since it is at present 
the only substitute for undergraduate discipline. This, 
indeed, is the function of graduate work in the other 
departments of science in the universities. It is empha- 
sized, however, in psychology since, as I shall show below, 
undergraduate instruction in experimental psychology is 
still in an inchoate condition even in the few larger 
institutions in which it has been added to the under- 
graduate course of study. Chairs in experimental psy- 
chology occupied by men whose principal function is 
graduate discipline — although in some institutions the 
undergraduate function is being recognized — are now no 
longer novelties. In the United States the extension of 
this method of treatment has been rapid, and the estab- 
lishment of chairs and of laboratories extraordinary. 
The first laboratory, since closed, was established in 
1883 at Johns Hopkins University. 

131 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

The treatment of general psychology, also, is ade- 
quate as never before in the graduate instruction of the 
country. The courses of lectures and the instruction 
by the Seminar method gather large numbers of stu- 
dents who have already graduated in less pretentious 
colleges. The publication in recent years of so many 
systematic treatises, especially in America, has con- 
tributed to this ; a dominating influence in this matter 
being a work which has proved to be a vade mecum to 
psychological inquirers — the "Principles of Psychol- 
ogy" of Professor William James. 

B. Psychology as Undergraduate Discipline. — The 
position of psychology in the undergraduate curricula of 
the leading institutions also invites remark. Two im- 
portant changes may be discerned in recent years, both 
indicating the permanent breaking away of this disci- 
pline from its earlier hampering connections : first, the 
recognition of the aim of the science as self-knowledge 
and self-control; and second, the introduction of the 
experimental method of instruction. 

The first of these tendencies is shown in the re- 
markable change worked (and still working) in the 
qualifications and training of the occupants of chairs 
in philosophy and psychology. Even the smaller de- 
nominational institutions are following the lead of the 
great eastern foundations, and of the progressive state 
universities, in seeking men who are trained to the same 
rigorous interpretation of fact and search for it that 
are the first requisites of the genuine Naturforschcr in 
other branches of science. The guardianship of this 
important realm, the mind, from outside, in the sup- 
posed but mistaken interests of religious and ethical 
truth, has had its day in many institutions — at least 
in any sense that denies to the investigator and teacher 

132 



PSYCHOLOGY PAST AND PRESENT 

the full liberty of disputing hypotheses which facts do 
not support, and of stating those, however novel, which 
well-observed facts do support. Consequently philoso- 
phy and psychology are now self-controlling depart- 
ments in the colleges ; and so the courses of psychology 
are arranged with view both to the adequate instruction 
of the student in its history and results, and with view 
to that high discipline which the pursuit of the " moral " 
— as opposed to " physical " and " natural " — sciences 
undoubtedly gives. 

Second, the introduction of the experimental method 
of instruction has had its beginning. It consists in the 
actual demonstration of the leading facts of experi- 
mental and physiological psychology in the class-room 
with added opportunities for students to perform them 
upon one another, and, under certain topics, upon the 
dissected nervous systems of animals. One of the results 
is the greater concreteness and interest given to the 
subject for younger students and the correspondingly 
increased election of all the branches of the tree of 
philosophy in the later years. The union of the two 
functions of introspection and experimental observation 
thus secured renders this branch, in my opinion, of 
unique and as yet undeveloped value in the total dis- 
cipline of college life. 

It is evident that this undergraduate service cannot 
be adequately realized until the science which aims to 
render it is itself well developed and sufficiently cate- 
gorized. The actual condition of things suggests en- 
couragement, therefore, but not enthusiasm. It is 
evident that such a method of instruction is at present 
impossible to any but the original workers in this field, 
and they indeed are each a law unto himself. There 
are very few experiments of a psycho-physical or psy- 

133 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

chological kind which are of such evident importance 
and value as to be recognized by all as available for 
class demonstration. And a more radical defect is that 
there are very few principles as yet formulated which 
can be adequately demonstrated by single or grouped 
experiments. The whole exhibit of apparatus at Chi- 
cago contained very few things which are suitable and 
convenient for untrained use or illustration ; this is an 
indication of the difficulties still in our way. It is a 
duty which experimental psychology owes to education 
to meet this need by bringing her results into line with 
the more elementary principles of general psychology, 
of providing simple apparatus which can be used by 
less expert instructors, and of preparing text-books 
for junior classes. While no text-book to-day exists 
for this purpose, it is yet gratifying that two such 
" Courses in Experimental Psychology " 1 have already 
been announced by competent writers, both American 
(Professor Sanford of Clark University and Professor 
Titchener of Cornell University). 

Reference to the latest catalogues of Brown, Wiscon- 
sin, and Michigan Universities (not to mention many 
others) may serve to show the nature of the courses 
offered in institutions where the work is as yet mainly 
undergraduate. 

C. Psychology in its Bearings on Pedagogy. — Finally, 
the relation of psychology to the science of education 
maybe given a word after the discussion of its place 
in practical education. Pedagogy as a science treats 
of the application of psychological principles to the 
development of normal and cultured personality. The 
ground-work of such a science must be afforded there- 
fore by psychology; and inasmuch as the teacher has 

1 Both have now appeared (1902). 
134 



PSYCHOLOGY PAST AND PRESENT 

to do with body as well as mind and with mind princi- 
pally through the body, it is experimental or psycho- 
physical psychology to which this duty to theoretical 
education mainly comes home. It is needless to say 
that there is no such science of pedagogy in existence. 
Most of the books which have heretofore appeared in 
America on this topic — and their name is legion — are 
unworthy of serious attention. Further, the importation 
of the German a priori " Systems of Pedagogics " finds its 
main service in keeping awake the expectation and the 
amour penser of teachers : not in affording them much 
empirical assistance in their task. Yet it is encourag- 
ing that the phrases " child-study," " self-activity," " ap- 
perception," " scientific methodology," etc., are in the 
air, and every teachers' convention listens to reams of 
paper on such topics. 

Contemporary psychology is becoming aware of this 
duty also, however far she may yet be from performing 
it. Children are being studied with some soberness and 
exactness of method. Statistical investigations of the 
growth of school-children, of the causes and remedies 
of fatigue in school periods, of the natural methods of 
writing, reading, and memorizing, are being carried out. 
The results of several such inquiries were plotted for 
exhibit in the department of Anthropology at Chicago. 
Questions of school hygiene are now for the first time 
intelligently discussed. The relative values of different 
study-disciplines are being weighed in view of the needs 
of pupils of varying temperaments and preferences. 
And it only remains for the psychologists — themselves 
teachers — to set the problems and establish the methods, 
and all the enthusiasm that is now undirected or mis- 
directed will be turned to helpful account. Among 
those who have addressed themselves to this task in 

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PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

this country with information and influence one name 
may be mentioned without invidious comparison, that 
of W. T. Harris, U. S. Commissioner of Education, 
Editor of the " International Education Series." 1 



VIII. Psychology and Other Disciplines 

It is necessary, in conclusion, in order that this report 
may adequately present the conditions under which 
psychology exhibits herself and her historical progress, 
to speak briefly of the relations which this topic sustains 
to the other " moral " forces which make up largely the 
culture element in our present-day social environment. 
The traditional connection with philosophy is not severed 
by the new directions of our effort, but on the contrary 
they are made more close and reasonable. The change 
in psychological method was due in part, as I have said 
above, to changes in philosophical conception ; and it is 
only part of the same fact that scientific psychology is 
reacting upon philosophy in the way of healthful stim- 
ulus. Both the critical idealistic and the critical realistic 
methods of philosophy are richer and more profound by 
reason of the lessons of the new psychology. It was 
only just that the science which owed one of its earliest 
impulses in this country to a book from an advanced 
thinker of the former school, the " Psychology " of Pro- 
fessor John Dewey of the University of Michigan, should 
repay the debt by its reconstruction of the Kantian doc- 
trine of apperception in terms acceptable to the later 
thinkers of that school. And it is no small gain to both 
^schools that their issue should be joined, as it is to-day, 
on ground which stretches beyond their old battle-fields 

1 Series of pedagogical monographs based on Experimental Psychology 
are now being edited by Ziehen (German) and Binet (French). 

136 



PSYCHOLOGY PAST AND PRESENT 

by all the reach of territory covered by the modern doc- 
trines of Naturalistic Evolution and the Association 
Psychology. Philosophy escapes the charge of Lewes 
that her discussions are logomachy, when the disputants 
on both sides are able to look back upon those even of 
the late period of Lewes and admit the essential truth 
of both of their hotly-contested formulas. So far as 
this is the case, I venture to say that it is due to the 
progress of psychology in giving content to the terms of 
the logomachy and in enabling the best thinkers to reach 
more intuitions at once synthetic and more profound. 

The relation of psychology to theology is also now as 
close as ever, and must remain so. And the obligation 
must become one of greater mutual advantage as psy- 
chology grows to adult stature and attains her social 
self-consciousness in the organization of knowledge. 
The benefits which theology might have gained from 
psychology have been denied in great measure through 
the unfortunate attempt to impose the theological method 
upon the treatment of the whole range of mental fact. 
The treatment of "Anthropology" included in the 
text-books of systematic theology bears about the same 
relation to that of current Psychologies like Hoffding's 
and James' as the physiology of the philosophers not 
long since bore to the work of the neurologists and mor- 
phologists. It is evident, however, that this condition 
of things is now happily mending; and it is to the 
credit of James McCosh, lately President of Princeton 
College, that he first, of the theologians who were teach- 
ing philosophy in this country, welcomed and advocated 
the two new influences which I have taken occasion 
above to signalize as the causes of the better state of 
things : the influence of the German worl^ in psychology 
(see Preface to Ribot's German Psychology of To-day, 

137 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

1886) and that of the evolution theory in biology 
(see Religious Aspect of Evolution, 1888). 

Finally, I may note the growth of a new department 
of psychological study which aims to investigate the 
mental and moral life of man in its social and collec- 
tive conditions. The evident need in such subjects as 
Sociology and Criminology is the knowledge of the laws 
of human feeling and action when man is found in crowds, 
orderly or disorderly, and in organizations, legitimate or 
criminal. This need is now beginning to be felt both by 
sociologists and by psychologists, and we may hope that 
the questions already started in Italy by Ferri, Sighele 
(La foule criminelle, 1893), in France by Tarde (Les 
Lois de VImitation) and Guyau (Education and He- 
redity, Eng. trans. 1892), and in England by Spencer, 
may receive fruitful development in this country. It is 
an interesting sign of the times in education that the 
theological schools are beginning to realize the need of 
such knowledge of collective man, as part of the training 
of the ministry. Instruction in social questions is made 
a separate department in the Yale Divinity School and 
in the Chicago Theological Seminary, as well as in other 
such institutions. 

En resume, I have only to add that psychology is now 
the branch of knowledge which is developing in most 
varied and legitimate ways; and that the exhibition 
made at the Columbian Exposition, while not adequate 
in many respects, yet served, to those who studied it 
intelligently, to indicate the present gains and the future 
prospects of the science. 



138 



VII 

THE POSTULATES OF PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY 1 

The last thirty years have been rich in new things. 
We hear the claims of a new theology, a new literature, 
a new education. And if these departures were new as 
the styles are new, and exhibited the changing phases of 
intellectual taste alone, we might judge them ephemeral, 
and let them die. But when we remember that intel- 
lectual history is dynamic, that thought is the true 
reality, and a movement in thought an irrevocable step 
of progress or retrogression — that a new means an old 
and that age is decay, we feel the importance of radical 
changes in any of these departments, and wish to be 
well convinced before we endorse them. 

The present encouraging state of psychological science 
and its hopeful outlook into the future are due, no doubt, 
in large measure, to the clearer enunciation of the prin- 
ciples of the so-called " new psychology " and the wider 
range which contemporary science affords for their con- 
sistent application. The question was asked, indeed, 
long ago, " Can psychology be made a natural science ? " 
— and when the most acute thinker of modern times, 
from his seclusion at Konigsberg, confirmed as an oracle 
the negative of his predecessors, the impulse toward an 
empirical treatment of mind was again restrained for a 
century ; and necessarily restrained, since French empiri- 

1 From The Presbyterian Review, July, 1887. 

139 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

cism was sentimental rather than theoretical, and Eng- 
lish empiricism was agnostic rather than constructive. 
But the change is now making, and it seems to be the 
necessary outgrowth of sweeping tendencies of the times. 
M. Paul Janet describes the movement, whose product 
is a world-wide realism in general thought, as the recon- 
ciliation of science and philosophy, while yet he holds 
to the essential separateness of the two intellectual 
spheres ; but the change for psychology means more 
than this. 

Either philosophy is too general to mean anything, 
or it means the rationalizing of science ; in either case, 
we are told, psychology may dispense with philosophy 
as the other sciences dispense with it, except as their 
declared results form the ensemble of knowledge which, 
in its ultimate concatenation and adjustment, exhibits 
the work of a true philosophy. Physiological psychol- 
ogy has no quarrel with general philosophy as such nor 
with a metaphysic which is sufficiently modest ; it only 
asserts its right and its ability to deal with its own 
content after its own fashion, promising when it shall 
have attained full scientific self -consciousness to hand in 
its reports to the tribunal of higher and more general 
thought for a place in a developed world-theory. 

To say that the soul is natural is not to say that it is 
mechanical, nor is it to say that there is continuity of 
law in the natural and spiritual worlds ; on the contrary, 
it is to say that nature is intelligent and that the laws of 
thought are the laws of things. We know nature as we 
think it. Nature apart from thought would not be the 
nature that we know, since nature can be thought. 
Absolute being is impossible as long as being is a notion. 
A thing is an object, and a thing which is not thought 
is, as Zeller well remarks, a thing with nothing objective 

140 



POSTULATES OF PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY 

about it — that is, no thing. And this is necessarily so 
from the nature of the perceptive process. Perception 
has both its objective and its subjective side ; that is, 
perception without an object cannot be perception, just 
as the object without perception cannot be an object, and 
the recognition of this duality is the fundamental idea of 
the new psychology. For twenty centuries men have 
been reasoning from the ego side of the equation of 
perception to the non-ego side, and the rich fruits of 
natural science are the consequence, while they have 
seldom thought to reason from the non-ego to the ego 
side, a process whose legitimacy stands or falls with its 
reverse. If you say I cannot reason from nature to 
mind, I reply that you cannot reason from mind to 
nature, since both rest upon the same perception. Why 
do I believe in external causation ? Because I have a 
causal judgment, and perceive that it works in nature. 
So to the extent of causation I conclude that nature can 
be read by thought. If there be subjective causation, 
nature could not have been constructed without objec- 
tive causation, and if there be objective causation, the 
mind could not have been constructed without subjec- 
tive causation; for the contrary in either case would 
invalidate perception. We must assume the validity of 
perception for all science. 

This being so, we rationalize nature, and afford, as 
we have already said, ground for a philosophy of things, 
but not until we have attained science, and not by a 
deductive method. The idealist is right in emphasizing 
consciousness, but wrong in refusing to see that con- 
sciousness is bipedal. M. Ravaisson is right in saying 
that " the true substance of things is the unity of 
thought," provided we say also that the true substance 
of thought is the unity of things. We may obtain 

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PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

psychic data from without as well as from within, for 
the without is as necessary to the within as the within 
is to the without. 

Far from undermining the standpoint of the old psy- 
chology — that is, the inductive science of Aristotle 
and the British School, this position tends to confirm it ; 
for consciousness can never be escaped, and a ground- 
work of ascertained knowledge is necessary for scientific 
construction. The experimenter on association must 
know that there are ideas and that they are associated, 
and only a descriptive, that is, a subjective psychology 
can give these facts. This is admitted by the leaders of 
the new school, as Wundt, 1 Bain, Ribot, however much 
in their metaphysic or in the absence of metaphysic some 
of them may tend to positivism and however much they 
may exaggerate the relative importance of the objective 
method. 

As to the legitimacy, moreover, of such an expansion 
of psychology a test is ready at hand. Do psychic phe- 
nomena present the conditions necessary to the employ- 
ment of objective and naturalistic methods? Can the 
mind be subjected to experiment in analysis, synthesis, 
and measure ? Has the mind magnitudes, first, in dura- 
tion or time, second, in quantity or mass ? The first of 
these inquiries suggests the function of mathematics, the 
second the function of general dynamics, and together 
they constitute the question of method so fiercely dis- 
cussed in Germany during the last thirty years. It may 
be stated in classical language thus : 

1 " With the same right with which the physicist conducts his investi- 
gations of the phenomena of nature, without reference to the subjective 
meaning of sensation and perception, with the same right can the psy- 
chologist investigate the course of men's experience, inasmuch as he may 
regard the external world as presentation merely, the pToduct of psycho- 
logical processes and laws " (Phys. Psych. II., 454). 

142 



POSTULATES OF PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY 

(a) How is mathematical psychology possible ? (b) 
How is experimental psychology possible ? 

I have thrown these points of inquiry into the 
Kantian form because it is Kant who replies to them, 
with his usual conciseness and authority. He says in 
effect : : " Psychology can never be raised to the rank of 
an exact natural science," because (a) mathematics is 
not applicable to internal phenomena, " for the internal 
intuition in which these phenomena must be construed 
has only one dimension, time," and (6) experiment has 
no range in internal phenomena, for the varied phases of 
inner observation cannot be changed at will by ourselves 
or others, and moreover the very fact of observation 
alters the condition of the subject observed. These two 
objections hit precisely upon the points upon which a 
natural psychology as such must rest, and so long as 
they remained unanswered such a science was made im- 
possible. Two recent psychologists, Herbart and Wundt, 
have taken issue respectively here and there; we shall 
briefly interpret the answers they have given. 

Herbart is essentially a metaphysician. He postulates 
ontology and subsumes psychology as a department of 
the real. Like German thinkers generally, before the 
rise of the materialistic and positivist movements he 
" began up," to use Fechner's expressive figure, and 
" came down," instead of beginning down and going up. 
He knew the ego immediately, and from this knowledge 
postulated the universal category of the real, then by a 
direct circle, to escape the meshes of Fichteanism, as he 
himself says, 2 subsumed the ego as a species of the 
genus into which it had been expanded. If the ego be 
my first knowledge of the real, why may it not be the 

1 Melaph. Anfangsgriinde d. Naturwissenschaft (Rosenkranz, 5, 310). 

2 Tractate, Ueberdie Subsumption d. Psychologie, etc., Gottingen, 1835. 

143 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

sum of the real ? If the ego be consistently subsumed 
from the first, whence comes my knowledge of the real ? 
This is the circle of the realist and the justification of 
the subjective idealist, and Herbart learned from Hegel to 
side with the former. But if he was thus saved from the 
meshes of Fichte, his original conception of the problem 
of general philosophy and its method saved him, on the 
other hand, from the fruitless dialectical development 
of the Hegelians. Philosophy, says he, is the elabora- 
tion of conceptions, the completion of internal facts. 
Matter, a simple thing, a logical subject, is to the senses 
no longer simple, but a sum of qualities or attributes, 
each of which is a real. Here is a contradiction. How 
can the presentation be elaborated and the logical oppo- 
sition eliminated? Such contradictions meet us on all 
hands, in our notions of motion, causation, the ego — 
"how can the subjective be immediately the same as the 
objective I ? " The reconciliation of logical opposites 
and the consequent rectification of the notion is the task 
of philosophy. 

This is readily recognized as the old problem of Hegel, 
and the antinomy is formally the same: a = no?i a. 
Hegel admits the validity of both members of the equa- 
tion and the reality of the contradiction, and aims to 
make the valid thinkable. Herbart denies the validity 
of the first member of the equation, makes a substitute 
for it, and aims to make the thinkable valid. Here is 
again, in Herbart, the standpoint of the new psychology 
— external validity. 

Suppose we represent an object by A, its notion by M, 
and its phenomenal manifestation by N; then in the 
interpretation of A, we have the equation M = N. But 
we find that this is not true. M in thought is a unit, a 
simple ; N in experience is an aggregate, a complex. As 

144 



POSTULATES OF PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY 

valid, M must be one with N ; as thinkable, M must not 
be one with N. Assert the contradiction and deny the 
oneness — you have a thinkable M (claiming with Her- 
bart the ultimate basis of philosophy to be experience, 
hence the validity of N), but not a valid — and Herbart 
looks toward Comte ; deny the contradiction and assert 
the oneness, and you have a valid M, but not a thinka- 
ble — and Hegel looks toward Fichte. But if we have 
knowledge by the notion at all, M must be both valid 
and thinkable. So the notion must be elaborated, 
changed into conformity to the reality, from a simple to 
a complex. 

To illustrate this and at the same time contract our 
thought to an application that is psychological, let us 
look for a moment at the solution of the contradictions 
in the ego. 

As metaphysics is the science of the thinkableness of 
experience in general, so psychology is the science of 
the thinkableness of inner experience — how is a natu- 
ral science of psychology possible ? We have seen how 
Kant answered this question, and are now in a position 
to interpret the answer of Herbart, for the development 
of the preceding paragraph is true in terms of self. Let 
A be the ego as it is, M the ego of self-consciousness 
(subject), and N the ego of which M is conscious (object). 
Now, to make M equal to N, the presenting must be 
the same as the presented I — the subject identical with 
the object. But, says Herbart, the same entity cannot 
be in both members of a relation, " the subjective cannot 
be immediately the same as the objective I." Here is 
a contradiction. Philosophy must perform its function. 
The conception must be completed. Instead of a simple 
M must be a complex; wherein does the complexity 
reside ? To answer this question, we must inquire 
10 145 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

into the nature of the real I, and in this answer we 
shall discover Herbart's true contribution to the new 
psychology. 

The soul is a " real " in a definite and technical sense. 
" Reals " are the simple, penetrable, innumerable, differ- 
entiated, spherical, ultimate postulates of existence. 
They are " pure position," and by reason of their pene- 
trableness can be conceived as overlapping or inter- 
penetrating each other ; this gives rise to material bodies 
or matter. " The grouping of the monads according to 
experience is called by us a thing." Thus the noumenon 
becomes phenomenon. Conceive the reals projected 
from the space of intellect into the space of sense, 1 
and give to them motion in right lines, with all conceiv- 
able degrees of velocity. Each real becomes a centre 
of contending forces, and the resultant varies with the 
quality of the opposing reals. If reals of opposite 
quality come into opposition, a condition of permanent 
strife is induced in consequence of the continued action 
of unneutralized contraries. The tendency to maintain 
itself thus found in all things in their last analysis is 
called self-persistence. 

The ego, then, as simple being located at a point, 
strives to maintain itself against the action of vibrating 
cerebral elements. This opposition gives ideas, which, 
when viewed as inherent objects of the soul's self- 
consciousness, are efforts at psychic self-persistence and, 
considered in their independent relation, objects of in- 
ternal cognition. " The presentation of these objects," 
says Herbart, " may be a series of acts of self -persistence 
against interference from other essences." Now, the 
sum of these acts of self-persistence of our ideas or 
mental states must be identical with the subject itself, 

1 For the doctrine of " intelligible space," see Metaphysik, § 7. 
146 



POSTULATES OF PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY 

since the ego sees itself, substituting for the manifold- 
ness of its manifesting states the unity of the manifested 
I. So this substitution may be reversed. The true mul- 
tiplicity of consciousness must take the place of a mis- 
taken unity, and the conception of the ego is emended. 
M is no longer a simple but a complex. M = N is now 
both a valid and a thinkable equation, and the process 
of self-consciousness is vindicated. 

Whatever we may think of this metaphysic, we see in 
Herbart's idea of the interaction of representations or 
images, considered as forces, a new conception of internal 
facts. If psychic states tend to any degree to influence 
one another, if one dominates and others grow subordi- 
nate, this is sufficient confirmation, in so far, of the new 
conception, and makes possible a dynamic of mind. For 
such a science it is not necessary that mental states be 
forces per se in any occult or metaphysical sense nor 
still less in any materialistic sense, and Herbart distinctly 
discountenanced any such construction. It is only ne- 
cessary that they be potent in reference to one another. 
The advent of a new presentation in the field of con- 
sciousness detracts from the intensity of former images, 
a loud sound drowns a feeble sound, the sun blots out 
the moon. Force, then, intensity, mass, is the second 
dimension of mind, as time is the first, and Kant's 
objection to the employment of the methods of mass 
determination, drawn from natural science, is over- 
thrown. 

While we owe to Herbart the first step toward an 
experimental psychology, he himself was false to his 
conception. He built up a mathematical science as 
rigid as Euclid and as fallacious as Spinoza. Admitting 
the application of mathematics to psychic states, why 
may we not assume psychic axioms and construct a 

147 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

deductive science ? You may, replies the experimental 
psychologist, provided you show us first the psychic 
axioms. Spinoza was at perfect liberty to use the 
mathematical method, provided he were willing to rear 
his temple on an axiomatic quicksand. Mill's doctrine 
of Euclid would probably be correct if his doctrine of 
Euclid's axioms were correct. 

This is the difficulty, and it is as old as Kant's 
second objection to a natural psychology. If a purely 
mathematical science fail, we must resort to an induc- 
tive science — that is, an experimental, either internal 
or external, or both. Kant objects in general terms : ex- 
periment has no application to internal phenomena, for 
the varied phases of inner observation cannot be changed 
at will by ourselves or others, and, moreover, the very 
fact of observation alters the conditions of the subject 
observed. How have these positions been met ? 

It would not do to say that recent work has first 
answered these objections, for the Scottish psychologists 
replied to them long ago by the employment of internal 
experiment. 

If a science of mind be possible at all, there must be 
laws of mind. What is the nature of these laws ? It 
does no good to attempt to define mind, as it does no 
good in the construction of physics to attempt to define 
matter. Whatever the ultimate constitution of matter 
be, physics deals with matter as we know it, and what- 
ever the ultimate constitution of mind be, psychology 
deals with mind as we know it. The nature of the 
soul, then, is not a question for psychology, but for 
ontology, or logic in its broad critical sense, and is at 
once relegated to general metaphysics. If the meta- 
physician decide that the soul is a substance, psychic 
phenomena remain the same ; and if he decide that the 

148 



POSTULATES OF PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY 

soul is a function of the body, psychic phenomena are 
not changed by his decision ; so, evidently, the most 
sensible, as certainly the most logical, method of pro- 
cedure is to define psychology as the science of psychic 
phenomena, of all sorts whatever, and to consider the 
area of its domain the conscious wherever we find it. 
The psychologist is no longer a speculator,, but a seeker 
after facts. 

Pursuing our development, the question at once arises, 
What are psychic phenomena ? How do we know mind ? 
According as we answer this inquiry we take part with 
one or the other of two opposing parties within the 
school. We know mind only in its connection with 
matter, say English empiricists, consequently psychology 
as science is dependent upon physiology. 

It is necessary, therefore, to distinguish carefully the 
conservatives from the extreme left in the new school. 
The former comprise the German physiological psy- 
chologists, as Fechner, Lotze, Wundt; the latter, the 
positivist thinkers of England and France, Bain, Lewes, 
Ribot. The latter are as untrue to the new standpoint 
as were the old metaphysicians whom they criticise, in- 
asmuch as they take as definite an attitude toward the 
question of the substance of the soul. 

What, then, shall we say as to psychic laws ? If 
there be phenomena purely psychic, there must be laws 
purely psychic, and if there be phenomena psycho-physi- 
cal, there must be laws psycho-physical. But it must 
be remembered that purely psychic phenomena are 
such only in consciousness, and not in fact, and by 
a necessary consequence the psychic laws of such phe- 
nomena are quite subjective, and can in no way super- 
sede or contradict the psycho-physical laws, which 
control all psychic phenomena in fact. Psycho-physi- 

149 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

cal laws cannot be confined to phenomena which are 
consciously psycho-physical, but must be recognized as 
in actual operation, even in the highest and most 
ideal processes of mind. This is only to say that there 
is a uniform connection between mind and body. If we 
admit this position we have a duality in the mental 
life, it is true, but a duality in operation merely, the 
real duality being that of the conscious and unconscious ; 
while if with Wundt we maintain the independence of 
laws purely psychic, we violate with him the uniformity 
of the psycho-physical connection and postulate a real 
duality of mental functions — the purely psychic and the 
psycho-physical. Wundt forfeits unity in the account 
of mind, and finds three problems on his hands instead 
of one: first, to account for the purely psychic; second, 
to account for the psycho-physical ; and third, to account 
for the duality. 

The position that the whole mental life is consciously 
or unconsciously psycho-physical may seem at first sight 
to be a concession to the extreme left, but in reality 
it is not so. Even if the question as to the nature 
of the psycho-physical were decided — which is an un- 
warranted assumption — on the side of the positivist, 
there still remains the fact that perception is a sub- 
jective process, that matter is matter only as it is 
known, and that the laws of thought are laws of 
things. As long as the materialist continues to think, 
so long is he a spiritualist, and so soon as he denies 
the reality of thought, he denies the existence of all 
objects. 

But setting aside the question of spiritualism as a 
problem of metaphysics, and gathering up the advance 
we have already made, the crucial question now con- 
fronts us — What is the nature of psycho-physical laws ? 

150 



POSTULATES OF PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY 

It must be remembered at the outset that no answer to 
this question, which rests upon a preconceived hypothesis 
as to the nature of the soul, will be received by the new 
psychology. As an experimental science, it demands 
that the processes of induction be rigidly enforced, and 
the nature of the laws be decided by scientific interpreta- 
tion from the nature of the phenomena upon which they 
rest. There are, then, three distinct steps, each involv- 
ing long and detailed research in the various subordinate 
departments of physiological psychology : first, the obser- 
vation of psycho-physical facts in all their range with 
the aid of experiment and reliable testimony; second, 
the grouping of these facts under their various heads 
and the generalization of their common qualities ; third, 
the formulation of laws which shall be applicable to the 
whole or to distinct and necessary subdivisions of the 
psychological area. Then we shall be able, by a consen- 
sus of established relations, to make interpretations bear- 
ing upon mind and body and the nature of either. In 
short, we must do here what is done in every empirical 
science — at any rate, as much as we can. 

Physiological psychology is in the first of these stages, 
and it is useless as yet to expect, and profitless to attempt, 
more than minor generalizations. But astonishing activ- 
ity of research and proportionate fruitfulness of result 
are preparing the way, we believe, for greater discoveries. 
The approximate formulation of the laws of cerebral 
localization, the bearing of nervous inhibition and arrest 
upon psychic functions, the discovery of trains of cere- 
bral associations, the genetic derivation of the notion of 
space, the differentiation of nerve courses in the higher 
centres, the measurement of durations, mainly psychic, 
together with Fechner's law of the ratio of the growth 
of sensation and excitation — all afford data, in so far, 

151 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

for a more sweeping and general hypothesis as to the 
nature of the psycho-physical connection. For example, 
the establishment of trains of cellular association goes 
far toward accounting for reflex activity, toward break- 
ing down the barriers to a comparative psychology, 
toward establishing a psycho-physical basis for the 
mental higher processes, and toward affording ground 
for some such hypothesis as Beaunis' as to the serial 
and functional interaction of the automatic and the 
voluntary. But it is only as experimental data become 
more extended and complete that their interpretation 
can be made more secure and the subterranean passages, 
so to speak, can be opened up toward the citadel of 
the self. 

As illustrating this position, the process by which the 
celebrated logarithmic law of Fechner was arrived at is, 
perhaps, the best case in point. 1 The problem presented 
to Fechner was in brief this: given a series of sense 
excitations — say of sight — increasing in intensity by a 
constant multiple, to derive the law, if there be one, of 
increase in intensity of the corresponding series of sen- 
sations. First of all, as is a necessary preliminary in the 
comparison of all commensurate intensities, there must 
be a term of constant value in each series, sustaining 
a necessary relation to the same in the other. We con- 
ceive the idea that the smallest perceptible sensation may 
be constant and that the excitation which produces it 
may be constant also, and after exhaustive experiment 
upon all the senses, find that this hypothesis is true. 
Let us then call the smallest perceptible sensation the 
threshold or zero value in the series of sensations and 
the corresponding excitation unity in its series, and we 

1 A more detailed exposition of this topic is given in an earlier place 
(pp. 95 ff.). 

152 



POSTULATES OF PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY 

have fulfilled the first condition of comparative measure- 
ment. We have a fixed point in each scale and the 
relation between them. 

We next ask in what way our sensation scale is to 
be graduated, but before this can be answered another 
detailed and delicate piece of research upon the sense 
organs must be instituted — namely, to determine whether 
the smallest perceptible differences of sensation have a 
constant value, and if so, what this value is for each of 
the senses. Again our hypothesis is experimentally 
verified, and we have added to our data a second gen- 
eralization, the value of the excitation which produces 
the smallest perceptible difference in sensation. At 
this stage we assume the mathematical principle that 
differentials are equal and consider the smallest per- 
ceptible differences as mathematical differentials, and 
by a summing up of all our knowledge, write the 
equation : 

ds = k — , 

e 

de 
in which ds is the differential of sensation, — the 

e 

differential ratio of excitation, and k the proportional 

constant. 

Whence by integration : 

s — k log. e ; 

that is, the sensation varies directly as the logarithm of 
the excitation. By this law the sensations in an ascend- 
ing series are directly calculated from the corresponding 
excitations, and our sensation scale is graduated. 

It is seen at once that the essential feature of this 
operation is its experimental quality. No less than 
three times we returned to direct experiment upon the 

153 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

sense organs, and from the facts thus learned drew gen- 
eral truths, to serve in turn as premises for a wider 
inference. This affords a groundwork of observed fact 
to the final result, which, in so far as the experiments 
are reliable and the sources of error known, is not to be 
damaged by a hundred objections such as the a priori 
impossibility of the measurement of psychic magni- 
tudes or the error of the assumption of a uniform psy- 
cho-physical connection. 

In this law the first and second stages in the true 
development of an inductive science are exemplified, and 
the third, that of interpretation, or, as Mill says, of 
deduction, is yet to be attained. Considered alone, it is 
capable of several interpretations, and actually has sus- 
tained three, the physiological, the psycho-physical (Fech- 
ner), and the psychological (Wundt), and it is only as 
physiological psychology in its other paths of inquiry is 
adding to its laws that the first of these is being estab- 
lished. 1 Each of the considerations upon which the in- 
terpretation rests is a scientific generalization, and all but 
one are drawn from direct observation of the nervous 
system. In sharp contrast with this is the interpretation 
originally given by Fechner to the same law, viz., it is 
an ultimate and universal postulate of all interaction 
between mind and body. Mind and body, said he, are 
so constituted as to affect each other in a logarithmic 
relation, and this relation is the " how " of a pre- 
established harmony. This is to introduce a new meta- 
physical principle which forbids all further research, and 
the new psychology will have none of it. 

This single law, whatever we may say as to its scien- 
tific validity, suffices to illustrate the true method of 

1 See the further statement of these interpretations in the earlier 
place. 

154 



POSTULATES OF PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY 

inductive generalization, whether it be from an internal 
or from an external standpoint. 

The question as to the nature of psycho-physical laws 
is then to be left till the science is more mature. It has 
been so elsewhere. Kepler's discovery of the elliptical 
motion of the planets rested upon accumulated obser- 
vations of the actual positions of the heavenly bodies 
during centuries ; it would have been impossible with- 
out them. The laws of chemical synthesis rest upon 
observed facts of invariable combination, and we would 
consider the man a lunatic who attempted, for reasons 
of convenience or prejudice, to convince himself or 
others that the elements should combine otherwise. So 
when the psychologist asks that our judgment be sus- 
pended in this case in the interest of unprejudiced 
research, his position is only that of the physicist 
who will not assert categorically that all the physical 
forces are one, or that of the geographer who will not 
declare that all earthquakes are due to the cooling of 
the globe. 

Summing up the results of the foregoing discussion, 
we may enumerate teaching certain postulates of the 
science : 

.1. The naturalness of the psychic; psychology is a 
natural science. 

2. The validity of the knowing process and the 
consequent reality of things; the function of experi- 
ment. 

3. Uniformity of natural law in the domain of the 
psycho-physical ; the major premise and justification of 
induction. 

4. Unity in the mental life ; approach to the higher 
processes. 

We now find it easy to exhibit to the eye the position 

155 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

of physiological psychology in reference to the general 
science : 

Psychology. 

t i v 

Inductive. Deductive. 



Descriptive (Analytic). Genetic. Experimental. 



Internal. External. External. Internal. 



Cause to Effect. 



Cause to Effect. 



Hypnotism, 
Physiological Psychology. Dreams, 



Illusions, 

Neuro-psychology. Psycho-physics. Insanity, 

I etc. 



Psycho-dynamics. Psychometry. 1 

And in accordance with our postulates we may define 
the science and its subdivisions as follows : 

Physiological psychology is the science of conscious 
phenomena accompanied by nervous change. 

Neuro-psychology is that branch of physiological psy- 
chology which deals with intra- organic phenomena and 
their interpretation. 

Psycho-physics deals with extra-organic phenomena 
and their interpretation. 

Psycho-dynamics is that branch of psycho-physics which 
deals with the interpretation of intra-organic phenomena 
in terms of psychic intensity or mass. 

Psychometry 1 deals with the interpretation of intra- 
organic phenomena in terms of psychic duration or 
time. 

It is not our object to enumerate results in any of 
these subdivisions of physiological psychology, nor to 
justify them as legitimate fields of inquiry ; but simply 
to indicate the common ground on which they rest. 
That they are well established and permanently so, 

1 Mental Chronometry (see p. 110 above). 
156 



POSTULATES OF PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY 

no one who is abreast of current thought can doubt. 
The questions of neuro-psychology are perhaps receiving 
more attention than those of any other department, 
either of physiology or mental science. Professors in 
psychology must now be men of scientific training and 
spirit. Psycho-physical laboratories are growing in im- 
portance, and special organs are being devoted to the 
publication of their results. Recent text-books on 
psychology vie with one another in incorporating * the 
fruits of experimental research. No university course 
in mental science is now complete which does not pre- 
sent at least the methods and main results of scientific 
psychology, even though it be only to attempt their re- 
futation, and our collegiate institutions are seeking men 
of proper training for exact and original work. This 
certainly indicates progress. If the additions that are 
making are additions of fact outside the domain of 
mind, their discovery aids some other science ; but if 
they belong to the psychic or bear in any way, how- 
ever remotely, upon it, the old psychology erred in 
defect, and should be free to enlarge its view. 

This is all that is demanded by conservative thinkers, 
and it is only as a department of the general philosophy 
of mind that they admit it to be a " new psychology " at 
all. Nature can be interpreted only as it is known, and 
knowledge of nature can be attained only through the 
canons of exact research; consequently spiritualists 
will be the first to reap advantage from any new light 
thrown upon the correlations of mind and body. As 
long as consciousness is immediate and matter is mediate 
there can be no question as to the ultimate adjustment 
of their claims, and there should be no hesitation in 
widening the borders of the philosophy of mind to 
embrace this domain ; at the same time that we do not 

157 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

presume to draw the dividing lines which nature still 
conceals, and possibly always will, nor attempt in a 
spirit of dogmatism to settle the great questions which 
can be approached only through the most patient and 
extended toil. 



158 



VIII 

THE ORIGIN OF VOLITION IN CHILDHOOD 1 

In earlier articles of this series 2 I have endeavored to 
trace the development of the child's active life up to the 
rise of volition. The transition from the involuntary 
class of muscular reactions to which the general word 
"suggestion" applies, to the performance of actions 
foreseen and intended occurs, as I have before intimated, 
through the persistence and repetition of imitative sug- 
gestions. The distinction between simple imitation and 
persistent imitation has already been made and illustrated 
(the " try-try-again " experience). Now, in saying that 
volition — the conscious phenomenon of willing — arises 
genetically on the basis of persistent imitation, what I 
mean is this : that the child's first exhibition of volition 
is its repeated effort, to imitate movements seen, noises 
heard, &c. 

An adequate analysis of will with reference to the fiat 
of volition reveals three great factors for which a theory 
of the origin of this function must provide. These three 
elements of the volitional process are desire, delibera- 

1 From Science, Nov. 18, 1892. The theory of the rise of volition 
here announced was presented in detail at the International Congress 
for Experimental Psychology which met in London in August, 1892 ; 
a full abstract is to be found in the Proceedings of the Congress. It is 
worked out in detail in my Mental Development in the Child and the 
Race, chap. xiii. 

2 "Suggestion in Infancy," Science, Feb. 27, 1891; "Infants' Move- 
ments," Science, Jan. 8, 1892 (now incorporated in Mental Development). 

159 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

tion, and effort. Desire is distinguished from impulse 
by its intellectual quality, i. e., the fact that it always has 
reference to a presentation or pictured object. Organic 
impulses may pass into desires — when their objects be- 
come conscious. Further, desire implies lack of satis- 
faction of the impulse on which it rests — a degree of 
inhibition, thwarting, unfulfilment. Put more generally, 
these two characteristics of desire are: (1) a pictured 
object suggesting a satisfaction which it does not give, 
and (2) an incipient motor reaction which the imaged 
object stimulates but does not discharge. 1 

The first clear cases of desire — as thus understood — 
in the life of the child are seen in the movements of its 
hands in grasping after objects seen. As soon as there 
is clear visual presentation of objects we find impulsive 
muscular reactions directed toward them, at first in an 
excessively crude fashion, but becoming rapidly refined. 
These movements are free and uninhibited — simple 
sensori-motor suggestive reactions. But I find, in ex- 
periments with my children, that the more or less ran- 
dom at grasping objects, which prevailed up to about the 
sixth month, tended to disappear rapidly in the two sub- 
sequent months — just about the time of the rise of imi- 
tation. During the eighth month, my child, H., would 
not grasp at highly-colored objects more than sixteen 
inches distant, her reaching distance being ten to twelve 
inches. 2 This training of impulse is evidently an asso- 
ciation of muscular sensations in the arm with visual ex- 
periences of distance. The suggested reaction becomes 
inhibited in a growing degree by a counteracting nervous 
process; and here are the conditions necessary to the 

1 In my Handbook of Psychology, vol. ii., chap, xiv., § 2, there is a 
fuller development. 

2 See Science, xvi., 1890, p. 247 {Mental Development, chap iii.). 

160 



ORIGIN OF VOLITION IN CHILDHOOD 

rise of desire. It is safe, indeed, I think, to say that 
desire takes its rise in visual suggestion and develops 
under its lead. 

The two further requisites to the process of volition 
are deliberation and effort. The word " deliberation " 
characterizes the content of consciousness, and may be 
best described as a state of polyideism, or relatively unre- 
duced plurality of presentations, with a corresponding 
plurality of motor tendencies (motives). The feeling 
of effort seems to accompany the passage of conscious- 
ness into a monoideistic state after deliberation. It 
arises just when an end is put to the motor plurality by 
synthesis or co-ordination. Deliberation may exist with- 
out effort, as is seen in deliberative suggestion and in 
pathological aboulia, in which a man is a prey to in- 
coordinated impulses. 

Now these further conditions of the rise of volition 
are present in childhood in persistent imitation, the try- 
try-again experience. In the pre-imitative period, the 
so-called efforts of infants are suggestive reflexes. My 
child, E., strained to lift her head in the second month 
when any one entered the room ; and in her fourth 
month, after being lifted by the clasping of both her 
hands around her mother's fingers, the mere sight of 
fingers extended before her made her grasp at them and 
attempt to raise herself. Such cases — on which many 
writers rely, as does Preyer — fall easily under sensori- 
motor suggestion as it borders on physiological habit. 
The nearest it comes to volition is that it may involve 
faint glimmerings of desire, but it certainly lacks all 
deliberation. Further, simple imitation can be readily 
accounted for without any appeal to deliberation or 
effort and even without an appeal to desire. 

In persistent imitation we have an advance on simple 
11 161 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

imitation in two ways: (1) A comparison of the first 
result produced by the child (movement, sound) with 
the suggesting image or " copy " imitated, i. e., delibera- 
tion. This gives rise to the state of dissatisfaction, 
motor restlessness, which is desire, best described as 
" will-stimulus ; " (2) the outburst of this complex 
motor condition in a new reaction, accompanied in con- 
sciousness by the attainment of a monoideistic state 
(end) and the feeling of effort. Here, then, in persist- 
ent imitation we have, thus briefly put, the necessary 
elements of the volitional psychosis. 

The reason that in imitation the material for voli- 
tion is found is seen to be that here a certain "cir- 
cular process " maintains itself. In reactions which 
are not imitative (for example, an ordinary pain-move- 
ment reaction) this circular process, whereby the result 
of the first movement becomes itself a stimulus to the 
second, etc., is not brought about ; or, if it does arise, it 
consists simply in a repetition of the same motor event 
fixed by association — as the repetition of the ma sound 
so common with very young infants. Consciousness 
remains monoideistic. But in imitation the reaction 
performed comes in by eye or ear as a new and different 
stimulus; here is the state of motor polyideism neces- 
sary for the supervention of the feeling of effort. 

From this and other lines of evidence, 1 we are able to 
see more clearly the conditions under which effort arises. 
It seems clear that (1) the muscular sensations arising 
from a suggestive reaction do not present all the condi- 
tions ; in young children, just as in habitual adult per- 
formances, muscular sensations simply give a repetition 

1 Other evidence is (a) a research on students, called " Persistent Imi- 
tation Experiment," and (b) evidence from the pathology of speech (both 
given in Mental Development in the Child and the Race). 

162 



ORIGIN OF VOLITION IN CHILDHOOD 

of the muscular event. The kinesthetic centre empties 
into a lower motor centre in some such way as that 
described by James (Psychology, II., p. 582) along the 
diagonal line mc, trip in the " motor square " diagram 
given below (Fig. 1). This is also true when (2) sensa- 
tions of the " remote " kinesthetic order (the sight or 
hearing of movements made) are added to the muscular 





4 

/ l 


; ^ 


v r}~ 


-r=4^r- 1 


»""1 


v \~~~ 


A " 


■»1 


\ 




H 


~~~mF 




. 



Fig. I. — Simple Imitation, v, v' — visual seat ; mp = motor seat ; mt = 
muscle moved ; mc = muscle-sense seat ; A = " copy " imitated ; B = imi- 
tation made. The two processes v and v' coalesce and the reaction is re- 
peated without change or effort. 



sensations. They may all coalesce to produce again a 
repetition of the original reaction. The "remote" and 
" immediate " sources of motor stimulation reinforce 
each other. This is seen in a child's satisfied repetition 
of its own mistakes in speaking and drawing, where it 
hears and sees its own performances. Consequently (3) 
there is muscular effort only when the " copy " persists 
and is compared with the result of the first reaction ; 
that is, on the physical side, when the two processes 

163 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

started by the " copy " and the reactive result reach the 
higher co-ordinating centre together. The stimulus to 
repeated effort arises from the lack of co-ordination or 
identity in the different stimulations which reach the 
centre of co-ordination simultaneously. The mental 
outcome, effort, accompanies the motor outburst of 
these combined influences, and, so soon as this outburst 
reproduces the " copy," the effort is said to " succeed," 
the subject is satisfied, " will-stimulus " disappears, and 
the reaction tends to become fixed as habit. 

Physiologically the point which distinguishes persist- 
ent imitation with effort from simple imitation with 
repetition is this conflict of processes in the centre. In 
simple imitation the excitement aroused by the reaction, 
as its result is reported inwards by the eye or ear, finds 
no outlet except that already utilized in the first dis- 
charge ; hence it passes off in the way of a repetition of 
this discharge. See Fig I. 

In persistent imitation the first reaction is not repeated. 
Hence we must suppose the development, in a new centre, 
of a function of co-ordination by which the two regions 
excited respectively by the original suggestion and the 
reported reaction coalesce in a common more voluminous 
and intense stimulation of the motor centre. A move- 
ment is thus produced which, by reason of its greater 
mass and diffusion, includes more of the elements of the 
" copy." This is again reported by eye or ear, giving a 
" remote " excitement, which is again co-ordinated with 
the original stimulation and with the after effects of the 
earlier imitations. The result is yet another motor 
stimulation, or effort, still of great mass and diffusion, 
which includes yet more elements of the " copy." And 
so on, until simply by its increased mass — by the greater 
range and variety of the motor elements enervated — 

164 



ORIGIN OF VOLITION IN CHILDHOOD 

the " copy " is completely reproduced. The effort thus 
succeeds. See Fig. II. 

When muscular effort thus succeeds by the simple 
fact of increased mass and diffusion of reaction, the use- 
less elements fall away because they have no emphasis. 
The desired motor elements are reinforced by their agree- 
ment with the " copy," by the dwelling of attention upon 




Fig. II. — Persistent Imitation with Effort. C = successful imitation; 
cc = co-ordinating centre. (Other letters same as in Fig. I.) The pro- 
cesses at v and v' do not coalesce but are co-ordinated at cc in a new reac- 
tion mp', mt', which includes all the elements of the "copy" (A) and 
more. The useless elements then fall away because they are useless and 
the successful act is established. 

them, by the pleasure which accompanies success. In 
short, the law of survival of the fittest by natural, or, in 
this case " functional," 1 selection assures the persistence 
of the reaction thus gained by effort. 

This theory of the physical process underlying volition 
is not open to the objections commonly urged against 

1 The term " Functional Selection " is applied to this process in my 
Mental Development, 2d ed. 

165 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

earlier views. How can we conceive the relation of 
mind and body ? The alternatives heretofore current are 
three : either the mind interferes with brain processes, or 
it directs brain processes, or it does nothing — these are 
the three. Now, on the view here presented, none of 
these is true. The function of the mind is simply to 
have a persistent presentation — a suggestion, a " copy." 
The law of sensori-motor reaction does the rest. The 
muscles reflect the influence of the central excitement ; 
this creates more excitement, which the muscles again 
reflect ; and so on until, by the law of " overproduction," 
which nature so often employs, the requisite muscular 
combination is secured 1 and persists. 

Further, a direct examination of the infant's earliest 
voluntary movements shows the growth in mass, diffu- 
sion, and lack of precision which this theory requires. 
In writing, the young child uses not only hand, or hand 
and arm, or hand, arm, tongue, face, but, with these, his 
whole body. In speaking, also, he "mouths " his sounds, 
screws his tongue and hands, etc. And he only gets his 
movements reduced to order after they have become by 
effort massive and diffuse. I find no support whatever, 
in the children themselves, for the current view of psy- 
chologists, i, e., that voluntary combinations are gradually 
built up by adding muscle to muscle and group to group. 
This is true only after each of these elements has itself 
become voluntary. Such a view implies that the infant 

1 This application of the principle of " selection " to muscular move- 
ment is so simple a solution of this crucial problem that I fear I must have 
overlooked some suggestion of it in the literature of the subject. At 
any rate, the tracing of it in the phenomena of imitative suggestion has 
not occurred elsewhere. As a general hypothesis, however, it is inde- 
pendent of the question as to whether volition is first found in imitation. 
It is now (1902) confirmed by experimental evidence ; see especially LI. 
Morgan, Habit and Instinct, and Bair in Psychological Review, Sept., 1891. 

166 



ORIGIN OF VOLITION IN CHILDHOOD 

at this stage knows that he uses his muscles, which is 
false ; knows which muscles he has learned to use, which 
is also false ; and is able to avail himself of muscles 
which he has not learned to use, which is equally false 
— not to allude to the fact that it leaves suspended in 
mid-air the problem as to how the new conbination in- 
tended gets itself carried out by the muscles. 

It is evident, also, that in accounting for the earliest 
voluntary movements as cases of persistent imitative 
suggestion, we are making the presentation which con- 
stitutes the " copy " a thing imported into consciousness, 
a "suggested" thing which is imposed upon the infant 
by the necessities of its receptive nature. So it seems to 
be. 1 Whether and how the mind ever gets away from 
this chain of suggestions or "copies," selects its own 
" copy " or end, and secures by its own choice the per- 
sistence of it — this is the question of voluntary atten- 
tion. Its consideration would lead us too far afield from 
our present topic, the babies. 

1 It is possible that earlier obscure volitions might arise from the con- 
flicts of native impulses, if the complex conditions, as explained above, 
were realized. 



167 



IX 



IMITATION: A CHAPTER IN THE NATURAL HISTORY 

OF CONSCIOUSNESS 1 

Imitation is a matter of such familiarity to us all 
that it goes usually unattended to; so much so that 
professed psychologists have left it largely undiscussed. 
Whether it be one of the more ultimate facts or not, 
suppose we assume it to be so ; let us then see what we 
can explain by it, and where we may be able to trace 
its influence in the developed mind. 

§ 1. We may make it a part of our assumption — 
what I have endeavored to prove elsewhere 2 — that an 
imitation is an ordinary sensori -motor reaction which 
finds its differentia in the single fact that it imitates : that 
is, its peculiarity is found in the locus of its muscular 
discharge. It is what I have called a " circular activity " 
on the bodily side — brain-state due to stimulus, mus- 
cular reaction which reproduces the stimulus, same 
brain-state again due to same stimulus, and so on. The 
questions to be asked now are : where in our psycho- 

1 From Mind, Jan., 1894. This paper gives, in a summary way, some of 
the positions developed further in the volume entitled Mental Development 
in the Child and the Race, already referred to. It is now reprinted both 
as serving the purpose of a resume and also as being the first presentation 
of some of the views developed in that work (and also in the later volume, 
Social and Ethical Interpretations, 3rd ed., 1902). The numbered para- 
graphs are retained, as in the original publication, to mark the more 
abrupt transitions. 

2 Science (N. Y.), 1891, p. 113. Cf. the paper just preceding this. 

168 



IMITATION: HISTORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

physical theory do we find place for this peculiar "circu- 
lar " order of reaction? — what is its value in conscious- 
ness and in mental development? — and how does it 
itself arise and come to occupy the place it does? 

If the only peculiarity about imitation is that it 
imitates, it would follow that we might find imitations 
wherever there is any degree of interaction between the 
nervous organism and the external world. The effect 
of imitation, it is clear, is to make the brain a " repeat- 
ing organ " ; and the muscular system is, so far as this 
function goes, the expression and evidence of this fact. 
The place of imitation in life development is theoreti- 
cally solvable in two ways, therefore : (1) by an exam- 
ination of organisms and minds for actual imitations, 
and (2) by the deduction of this function from the 
theory of repetition in neurology and psychology — this 
latter provided we find that nature does not herself 
present enough de-facto repetitions to secure the de- 
velopment of body and mind. If this latter condition 
be unfulfilled — that is, if nature does actually repeat 
her stimulations, light, sound and so forth, sufficiently 
often and with sufficient regularity to secure nervous 
and mental development — then imitation is probably a 
side phenomenon, an incident merely. 

Without taking either of these questions in the 
broadest sense, I wish, while citing incidentally cases 
of the occurrence of imitation, to show the importance 
of repetitions and of the imitative way of securing 
repetitions, in the progress of mind. 

§ 2. If it be true, at the outset, that organic develop- 
ment proceeds by reactions, and if there be the two kinds 
of reaction usually distinguished, i. e., those which in- 
volve consciousness as a necessary factor and those which 
do not, then the first question comes : in which of these 

169 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

categories do imitative reactions fall? Evidently in 
large measure in that involving consciousness. If we 
further distinguish this category in so far as it marks 
the area of conscious life which is " plumb up," so 
to speak, against the environment — directly open to 
external stimulation — by the word "suggestion," we 
have thus marked off the most evident surface features 
of imitation. Imitation is then, so far, an instance of 
suggestive reaction. 1 

§ 3. Now let us look more closely at the kind of con- 
sciousness, and find its analogies. A 'mocking bird 
imitates another, a beaver imitates an architect, a child 
imitates his nurse, a man imitates his rector. Calling 
the idea of the result, as we look at the result (not as 
the imitator may or may not look at it), the " copy," we 
find that we are forced to consider the psychological 
elements involved very different in these four cases. 

1 It is not necessary, I think, to discuss in detail the meaning of this 
much- discussed but, in the main, very well-defined word — " suggestion." 
I have myself defined suggestion as " from the side of consciousness . . . 
the tendency of a sensory or an ideal state to be followed by a motor 
state" (Science, loc. cit.), [when this is] "typified by the abrupt entrance 
from without into consciousness of an idea or image (or a vaguely conscious 
stimulation) which tends to bring about the muscular or volitional effects 
which ordinarily follow upon its presence " (Handbook of Psychology, ii. 297). 
Janet says it is " a motor reaction brought about by language or percep- 
tion," Autom. Psych., p. 218 ; Schmidkunz : " die Herbeirufung eines Ereig- 
nisses durch die Erweckung seines psychischen Bildes," Psych, der Sugg. ; 
Wundt : " Suggestion ist Association mit gleichzeitiger Verengerung des 
Bewusstseins auf die durch die Association angeregten Yorstellungen," 
Hypnotismus u. Suggestion, Abs. ii. ; Ziehen: "In der Beibringung der 
Vorstellung liegt das Wesen der Suggestion," Philos. Monatschefte, xxix., 
1893, p. 489. It is so marked a fact in current theory, especially on the 
pathological side, that I have found it convenient to use a special phrase 
for consciousness when in the purely suggestible condition, ?'. e., "reactire 
consciousness" {loc. cit. pp. 60 ff., and chap. xii.). The phrase " conscious 
reflex " is not good as applied to these suggestive reactions ; for they are 
cortical in their brain seat, and are not as definite as ordinary reflexes. 

170 



IMITATION: HISTORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

This copy as defined in our minds, we are forced to 
think, is also clearly defined in the mind of the man, it is 
rudely defined in the mind of the child, it is not defined 
at all in the mind of the mocking bird, and in the mind 
of the beaver it is something else which is defined, and 
rudely. These cases are ordinarily distinguished by 
mutually exclusive words, i. e., in order : volition, sug- 
gestion, reflex reaction, instinct. Yet this one thing they 
do have in common, a constructive idea which we see 
objectively, and which each, in its result, repeats. It 
will be profitable to inquire into the origin and signifi- 
cance of this "copy" in each of these cases. 

§ 4. In the case of simple imitative suggestion we 
find what seems to be the most evident and schematic 
type. Here we have a simple visual or auditory copy 
stimulating the mind and the organism to a reaction 
which repeats the copy. But we find other reactions 
side by side with it which do not repeat a copy. 
Psychologists classify these reactions under the heads of 
instincts, impulses, reflexes, volitions. Now it is not 
making very great assumption in view of current theo- 
ries, to hold that imitations if repeated may become re- 
flex (reflex speech, reading, writing, etc., for example), 
nor to hold that reflexes when repeated and consoli- 
dated, become instincts either by heredity or by " coin- 
cident " variation which duplicates them in the next and 
following generations; 1 nor yet again to hold that in- 
stincts when snubbed, contradicted, and disused, are 



1 While remaining neutral here as respects the " inheritance of acquired 
characters," I may add that the negative opinion — represented by the 
" coincident variation " view of the text — is my mature opinion. See the 
theory of " Organic Selection " developed in the volume Development and 
Evolution (1902). A summary statement will be found in the Diet, of 
Philosophy, art. " Organic Selection." 

171 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

broken up into impulses. Then impulses consciously in- 
dulged, ratified, and repeated, in opposition to snubbing, 
evidently become volitions. If we did find it possible, at 
present, to admit these assumptions, and to give names 
to the two processes involved, calling the "repeating" 
process the law of habit, and the " snubbing " process 
the law of accommodation, we would have a suggestive 
line of thought based upon what is actually the state of 
things in the most advanced neurology. Yet we must 
not forget that both these principles are in operation at 
once, and we have a possible twofold derivation of each 
term in the series. For example, looked at from the 
point of view of accommodation, to the environment 
as Ziehen points out, impulsive actions are due to the 
breaking up of instincts ; but on the side of habit, or 
repetition, they represent volitions. 1 

Now let us see how in these several cases we can ac- 
count for the reaction. In the case of simple suggestive 
imitation, the copy is in consciousness for reproduction, 
and is reproduced. How does this come about ? 

§ 5. Suppose at first an organism giving random re- 
actions, some of which are useful; now development 
requires that the useful reactions be repeated, and thus 
made to outweigh the reactions which are damaging or 
useless. Evidently if there are any among the useful 
reactions which result in an immediate duplication of 
their own stimulus, these must persist, and on them 
must rest the development of the organism. These are 
the imitative reactions. Thus it is that an organism 

1 Imitation is a " mode [of action] whereby intelligence may change 
or deflect an instinct ... it is true that the initial stage of such deflection 
occurs in the ' original ideas ' " [what are called " copies " in this paper] 
(Romanes, Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 219). For the present writer's 
fuller views on the origin of instinct, see Development and Evolution and, 
for a popular account, the little book Story of the Mind, chap. iii. 

172 



IMITATION: HISTORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

once endowed with the reacting property might so 
select its stimulations as to make its relations to its 
environment means to its own progress ; and imitative 
reactions, as now defined, would be one method to such 
selection. 

This, it is plain, assumes consciousness in such an 
organism ; for it is difficult to see how a reaction which 
reproduces its own stimulus in an exact mechanical way 
could ever begin, or ever stop when begun ; that is, how 
it would differ from a self -perpetuating whirlwind, or 
from an elastic ball forever rebounding between two 
equal resistances. This last we do find in certain 
cases, 1 but inasmuch as such reactions are self-repeat- 
ing, they do not present any law of development, and 
so approximate to a state of things in which conscious- 
ness might be conceived to be absent. At any rate, 
I find it more philosophical to make consciousness as 
original as anything else, and to hold with Lewes that 
living organisms are always conscious. 2 

§ 6. Development begun on this basis could only pro- 
ceed if two requisites were fulfilled : first, the reaction 
which maintains itself must persist, and second, there 
must be a constant creation of new copies. The first 
means consolidation of tissues, a law of increasing fixed- 
ness in nerve processes, tending to give rise to great 

1 So with the endless repetitions of the same sounds by young children 
and parrots. Continued muscular tension kept up by circular discharge, 
until nervous exhaustion ensues, is characteristic also of the cataleptic 
condition. 

2 To be sure it may be said that an organism cannot in any case be 
compared with such a self-repeating mechanical device (say a swinging 
pendulum), from the facts that it gets exhausted and it grows. This is 
true, and for this very reason I am unable to accept the purely chemical 
doctrine of life which Verworn states in the theory spoken of subsequently 
(§ 8, below). But why may not consciousness be the " something" which 
secures (or at least evidences) growth, or exhaustion ? 

173 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

functional habits, which at any stage of progress repre- 
sent the acquired functions of the organism and its de- 
gree of adaptation to the environment. But, how is this 
persistence possible in the absence of the objective stimu- 
lus ? Evidently it is not possible, unless there be some 
way whereby the energies of the reaction in question 
may be started by something equivalent to the working 
of the original external stimulus. This is accomplished 
in the organism by an arrangement whereby a variety 
of copies conspire, so to speak, to " ring up " one another. 
When an external stimulus starts one of them, that 
starts up many others in a series, and all the reactions 
which wait upon these copies tend to realize themselves. 
Thus the great practised habits of the organism are con- 
firmed by stimulation again and again, while the in- 
creasing variety of the conspiring copies — constantly 
recruited from the new experiences of the world — make 
up a large and ever larger mass of elements, or centres, 
which vibrate in delicate counterpoise together. 

§ 7. Of course it is evident that the arrangement thus 
sketched is the physical basis of memory. A memory 
is a copy for imitation taken over from the world into 
consciousness. Memory is a device to nullify distance 
in space and time. It remedies lack of immediate con- 
nection with the accidental occurrences of the world. 
Every act T set myself to do is either to imitate some- 
thing which I find now before me, or to reproduce, by 
making objective to myself, something whose elements 
I remember — something whose copy I find set within 
me by a " ring up " from elements which are in imme- 
diate connection with what is now before me. 1 

1 The psychology of lying becomes clear when we remember that a 
lie is the emphasis of a " copy " just as truth-telling is. In children about 
two years old, truth or falsehood hangs largely upon the question what 

174 



IMITATION: HISTORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

§ 8. The theory so far advanced, with extreme brevity, 
is in accord with that first announced (obscurely I think) 
by Tarde. 1 Tarde's theory is improved, in quotation, 
and endorsed by Sighele. 2 It may be analyzed into two 
factors, i. e. (a), the securing of repetitions by imita- 
tion, and (5), the theory of memory considered as a 
means of perpetuating and increasing the effects of repe- 
tition, in mental development, by the formation of 
habits. This latter moment I find only vaguely and in- 
adequately stated by Tarde. Further, M. Tarde's view 
assumes the fact of imitation, makes of it an original 
endowment or instinct, and is, in so far, open to the ob- 
jections which may be urged (cf. Bain, Senses and In- 
tellect, 3rd ed., pp. 413 ff., taken up below, § 28) against 
such a view. The theory which I am now proposing 
supplies this lack: it gives a derivation of imitation 
based upon an analysis of the imitative reaction itself. 
This analysis — the outcome of which I have expressed 
by calling imitation a "circular reaction," i.e., one 
which repeats its own stimulus — gives us a means of 
defining imitation and fixing the limits of the concept 
(below § 26) . 3 The third and fundamental factor, there- 
fore, which the development stated above endeavors 
to supply, is the rise of imitation from simple contrac- 
tility under two -concurrent agencies : (1) the occur- 
rence, among the " spontaneous variations " of discharge, 

copy elements come up first. Before he has learned to apply the tests to 
his images by which true memories are distinguished, the child simply re- 
acts upon the images that are there, no matter where they come from. 

1 Les Lois de l' Imitation, chap. iii. ; published earlier in an article 
"Qu'est ce qu'une Socie'te," Revue Philosophique, xviii., 1884, p. 489. My 
views are, however, though in accord with, not the same as M. Tarde's 
— a matter which is spoken of in Social and Ethical Interpretations. 

2 Lafoule criminelle, pp. 42 ff. 

3 Cf. Tonnies, Philosophische Monatshefle, 1893, p. 298, on the neces- 
sity for definition in this field. 

175 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

of movements which secure at once the repetition of the 
first stimulus, and (2), the continuance of such of these 
self-repeating reactions as are useful (pleasurable). 
Those which are damaging (painful) or useless, by that 
very fact, lower the vitality of the organism and so 
hinder their own recurrence. This derivation of imita- 
tion secured, we are able to develop independently the 
two principles urged by Tarde and Sighele, as follows 
in this paper. 

This derivation of imitative reaction is in line, I think, 
with the most important and thorougli contributions 
lately made to the theory of organic movement — so far 
as one who is not a professed biologist is entitled to 
an opinion. Two recent investigators have summed up 
evidence which supplies in great part the basis long de- 
siderated for a theory of muscular action and develop- 
ment. Eimer 1 has stated the facts which make it 
probable that all the " morphological properties of 
muscle are the result of functional activity." On this 
view contraction waves leave markings which account 
for both muscle-fibres and striation. The series of stages 
in the development of voluntary muscle which biologi- 
cal science is now cognizant of, is very striking. That 
there are no anatomical divisions corresponding to the 
striation of muscle is shown by recent observations. It 
remains, then, only to find a physiological conception of 
contraction which, while applicable primarily to unicel- 
lular creatures, provides for the development of the 
organism and the differentiation of its parts. Natural 
history requires, in the words of Engelmann, that u every 
attempt to explain the mechanism of protoplasmic move- 
ment must extend to all the other phenomena of con- 

1 Zeitschrift fur wissen. Zoologie, liii. suppl. Bd. p. 67. 
176 



IMITATION: HISTORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

tractility." x This requirement the theory of contractility 
of Max Verworn seems to me to go far towards supply- 
ing, accordant as it is with the detailed results of Kiihne, 
Schultz, Engelmann, and others. The outcome of Ver- 
worn's work is a chemical theory of contractility which 
rests upon two known cases of chemical action. 2 Kiihne 
has proved that the oxygen of the air supplies a want 
to the outer layer of particles of a protoplasmic mass. 
The elements set free by this union find themselves im- 
pelled toward the centre by their affinity for the nuclear 
elements ; this new synthesis releases elements which 
again move outward toward the oxygen at the surface. 3 
Thus there are two contrary movements : away from the 
nucleus, or expansion, and toward the nucleus, or con- 
traction. Considering the oxygen-action as stimulus, 
we have thus a reaction which repeats its own stimulus 
and thus perpetuates itself. This is just the type of 
reaction which our circular theory, as outlined above, 
requires. Verworn pushes the claim of this type of vital 
action right up through all the forms of muscular action 
— just as Eimer finds only the one type of function 
necessary to account for all the morphological varia- 
tions. I am certainly, therefore, within the bounds of 
biological evidence in claiming that the imitative type 
of reaction is very early in biological order and signifi- 
cance ; and especially so if it be found, as this paper en- 
deavors to hold, that the progress of consciousness can 
be accounted for in stages corresponding in its great 

1 Quoted by Soury, Revue Philosophique, July, 1893, p. 45. 

2 Die Bewegung der lehendigen Substanz (Jena, 1892). Verworn 's work 
is summarized by Soury (see last note). SeeBurdon Sanderson's remarks 
on " Chemiotaxis " in Nature, Sept. 14, 1893, p. 471. 

3 The exhaustion of the nucleus by stimulation is shown by the work 
of Hodge, Changes due to Functional Activity of Nerve Cells (1893). 

12 177 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

features with the stages of differentiation required by 
the plrysiological and anatomical theories. 1 

The concomitance of higher and lower instances of 
the one * circular reaction " is seen in the voluntary 
contraction of a muscle because an act is pictured, de- 
sired, and imitated, on the one hand, and on the other 
hand, in the continued rhythmical performance of the 
same act automatically. 2 

§ 9. For example — resuming our analysis of con- 
sciousness : — you speak a word ; I at once write it. 
To-morrow, by reason of a brain lesion, I am unable to 
write the word when I hear you speak it, but I can still 
copy the word when you set it before me. The lesion 
has simply deprived me of the use of my internal visual 
copy by cutting the writing-reaction apparatus off from 
its connection with the auditory seat from which this 
visual copy was accustomed to be " rung up." But the 
simpler imitation of the external visual copy remains 
possible. A step further : I see a man and at once 
write his name. Here the visual image of the man 
rings up the auditory image of the name-word, tins 
rings up the visual copy-image of the written word, and 
this I imitate by writing. If any one had asked me 
why I wrote the man's name, I would have said : " Be- 
cause I remembered it." But each one of these images 
is itself a " copy," when needed for its own appropriate 
reaction. A young child, on seeing the man, would say 
"Man;" that is, he would imitate the auditory copy 
which the sight of the man rang up. And a certain 

1 It should be said, however, that the early presence of reactions of 
the " circular " kind does not depend upon the truth of this particular 
physiological theory (of the action of oxygen). 

2 See Chauveau on " The Sensori-motor Nerve Circuit of Muscles " in 
Brain, 1891, pp. 145 ff., and Exner on " Senso-mobilitiit " in PJiiiger's 
Archiv, xlviii., 592 ff. 

178 



IMITATION: HISTORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

child of mine would probably hasten to ask for a pencil 
in order to draw the man, that is, to imitate the sche- 
matic outline of man fixed in her memory by earlier 
efforts to imitate the external thing. 

§ 10. The question as to how the different " copies " 
come to ring one another up, in such a system, is the 
question of association. They can at first act together 
only so far as the original external copies are together. 
In other words, association by contiguity is simply the 
transfer of external togetherness into internal together- 
ness. But suppose a present external copy rings up 
another copy which is only internal : why is this ? 
Evidently because there are some other elements of 
copy either external or internal which have been to- 
gether with both : this is association by resemblance or 
contrast. For example : your spoken word brings up 
my written word-copy. Why? Because sound and 
written copy existed together when I learned to write. 
Again, " man " seen brings up " name written." Why ? 
Because " man seen " and " name heard " were pres- 
ent together when I learned to speak, and afterwards 
" name heard " and " name written " were present to- 
gether when I learned to write. So " name heard " is 
the common element of copy. 

§ 11. Reflection convinces us that we have now 
reached a principle of wide-reaching application in 
mental development. We see how it is possible for 
reactions which were originally simple imitative sugges- 
tions to lose all appearance of their true origin. Copy- 
links at first distinctly present as external things, and 
afterwards present with almost equal distinctness as 
internal memories, may become quite lost in the rapid 
progress of consciousness. New connections are estab- 
lished in the network of association, and motor dis- 

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PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

charges are stimulated thus which were possible at first 
only by imitation and owed their formation to it. A 
musician plays by reading printed notes, and forgets 
that in learning the meaning of the notes he imitated 
the movements and sounds which his instructor made ; 
but the intermediate copies have so fallen away that his 
performance seems to offer no surface imitation at all. 
His copy-system for sound persists, of course, to the end 
to guide his muscular reactions. But a musician of the 
visual type goes further. He may play from memory of 
the printed notes ; that is, he may play from a trans- 
planted visual copy of notes which themselves are but 
shorthand or substitute expressions of earlier sound and 
muscular copies, and finally the name only of a familiar 
selection may be sufficient to start a performance guided 
only by a subconscious muscular copy series. If this 
principle should be proved to be of universal applica- 
tion we would then be able to say that every intelligent 
action is stimulated by copies whose presence the action 
in question tends to reproduce. 1 

§ 12. Returning to the earlier question of the origin 
of instinct and impulse, I venture to suggest — subject 
to criticism and in the face of apparent paradox — that 
both of them are explainable by this principle of modi- 
fied and compounded imitations. The bird's nest-build- 
ing instinct is probably the native carrying-out of an 
adaptation which was at first carefully copied and has 
now been reproduced by variation, so that the direct 
fragmentary reactions upon the present world combine 

1 It is easy to see that the whole psychological theory of muscular 
control, whether central or peripheral in its seat, requires the production 
by the reaction of a sensation series which matches or repeats a copy 
series ; and inhibition in general represents the limitations which older 
structures and dispositions impose upon new reactions — they must con- 
form if possible to old organic "copy." 

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IMITATION: HISTORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

to make up the copy- whole which is our "idea" and 
the bird's creation. Likewise impulse is the trunk, the 
torso, of a reaction which has lost its copy and so failed 
to maintain itself in full operation — fully useful once, 
but now restricted and superseded by more complex 
activities. We have impulses and the animals have 
instincts because we have left the animals behind and 
by our rational volitions realize compounds of activity 
which instincts at their best only ape. In the insane 
asylums may be seen men in whom both the appearance 
of " idea," preserved in the animals by the equilibrium 
of instincts, and as the prevision characteristic of hu- 
man choice, are absent; and in these persons impulse, 
free from both checks, pkys itself out in fragmentary 
and destructive action. Like little children, before 
the training of volition, such patients learn only by 
imitation. 

§ 13. Accommodation, then, is the principle by the 
action of which, in the constant exercise of circular 
reaction, new adaptations are acquired, and the system 
of copies to which it is the end of our actions to con- 
form, is indefinitely recruited. 

§ 14. Continued accommodation is possible only be- 
cause the other principle, habit, all the time conserves, 
the past and gives points oVappui in solidified structure 
for new accommodations. Inasmuch, further, as the 
copy by transference from the world to the mind in 
memory, becomes capable of internal revival, accommo- 
dation takes on a new character — a conscious subjective 
character — as volition. Volition arises typically as a 
phenomenon of u persistent imitative suggestion," as I 
have argued in some detail elsewhere. 1 That is, volition 

1 Proceedings of Congress of Experimental Psychology, London, 1892, 
pp. 49 ff. ; the paper immediately preceding, in this volume. 

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PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

arises when a copy remembered vibrates with other copies 
remembered or presented, and when all the connections, 
in thought and action, of all of them are together set in 
motion incipiently. The residue of motive is connected 
with what we call attention, 1 and the final co-ordination 
of all the motor elements involved is volition, with 
choice. The physical basis of memory, association, 
thought, is also that of will — the cerebrum — and 
pathological cases show clearly that aboulia is funda- 
mentally a defect of synthesis in perception and mem- 
ory, 2 arising from one or more breaks in the copy 
system whose rise has been sketched in what precedes. 
§ 15. There are several aspects of presentation and 
representation which offer less difficulty when brought 
into connection with our present topic. Recent discus- 
sions clearly show not only the possible dominance in 
consciousness of a copy-image so strong and habitual as 
to assimilate new experiences to its form and meaning ; 
but also that this assimilation is the very mode and 
method of the mind's digestion of what it feeds upon. 
Consciousness constantly tends to neglect the unfit, the 
mat apropos, the incongruous, and to show itself recep- 
tive to that which in any way conforms to its present 
stock. A child after learning to draw a full face — 
circle with spots for the two eyes, nose, and mouth, and 
projections on the sides for ears — will persist, when 
copying a face in profile, in drawing the circle with two 
eyes and two ears, failing to see the error, although 
only one ear is visible and no eyes. 3 The external 

1 For an analysis of the relation of Reflex attention to sensation and 
movement, see chap, xiv., in Mental Development. 

2 Cf. Janet, " Un cas d'Aboulie, &c.," in Revue Philosophique, March 
and April, 1891. 

8 Cf. Passy's interesting observations in Revue Philosophique, 1891, 
ii, 614. 

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IMITATION: HISTORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

pattern is assimilated to the memory copy. The child 
has a motor reaction for imitating the latter ; why should 
not that answer for the other as well? As everybody 
admits, in one way or another, such assimilation is at 
the bottom of recognition, and of illusions, which are 
mostly mistaken recognitions. 

§ 16. Passing on to the sphere of conception and 
thought, we find a remarkable opening for the law of 
imitation. The principle of Identity which represents 
the mental demand for consistency of experience, and 
the mental tendency, already remarked, to the assimila- 
tion of new material to old schemes, is seen genetically 
in the simple fact that repetitions are normal every- 
where in mental life because of the law of habit in its 
reactions. Just in so far as a new experience repeats 
an old one, to this degree it accomplishes what motor 
imitation would have accomplished, and makes future 
repetitions easier. To say that identity is necessary to 
thought, therefore, is only to say that it expresses in 
a generalization the method of mental development by 
imitative reaction. Identity is the formal or logical 
expression of the principle of Habit. 

§ 17. The principle of Sufficient Reason is subject to 
a corresponding genetic expression, on the side of Ac- 
commodation. Sufficient reason, in the growing mind, 
is an attitude, a belief ; anything in its experience which 
tends to modify the course of its habitual reactions in a 
way which it must accept, endorse, believe — this has 
its sufficient reason, and it is accommodated to by imita- 
tion. I have argued elsewhere that a conflict between 
the established, the habitual, the taken for granted, the 
identified, on one hand, and the unidentified and un- 
assimilated, on the other hand, is necessary to belief. 
Belief arises in the child in the readjustment of himself 

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PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

actively to new elements of reality. In so far as there 
is truth in this view, in so far does Sufficient Reason 
become a formal or logical statement of the fact of ac- 
commodation. Put more broadly : whenever we believe 
a new thing or accept its existence, we accommodate 
our attitude to its presence, we make place for it in our 
store of acquisitions for future use ; this means that we 
are prepared to reproduce it voluntarily and involun- 
tarily, to make it a part of that copy system which hangs 
together in our memory as representing a consistent 
course of conduct and the best adjustment we have been 
able to effect to our physical and moral environment. 

Imitation is then the method by which our living 
milieu in all its aspects gets carried over and reproduced 
within us. The dynamic relationships of the ele- 
ments of this reproduced world supply to us our sufficient 
reason. Our accompanying sense of acceptance and 
endorsement of these copies by our own action is belief ; 
and the familiarity which repetition engenders betokens 
the growth of habit and the recognition of identities. 

§ 18. Conception proceeds by identities and sufficient 
reasons : and we get in this connection a genetic view 
of the active basis of the " general " notion. The child 
begins with what seems to be a general. His earliest 
experiences, carried over into memory, become gen- 
eral copies which stand as assimilative nets for every 
new event or object. All men are "papa," all colors 
are " wed," all food " mik." What this really means is 
that the child's motor attitudes are fewer than his 
receptive experiences. Each experience of man calls 
out the same attitude, the same incipient movement, 
the same coefficient of attention on his part, as that 
with which he hails "papa." In other words, each 
man is a repetition of the papa-copy and carries the 

184 



IMITATION: HISTORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

child out in action, just as his own imitative response 
to the papa-copy would have carried him out. But of 
course this does not continue. By accommodations, by 
experiences which will not assimilate, this tendency to 
habit is in part counteracted, his classes grow more 
numerous as his reactions do, his general notions more 
" reasonable," and he is on the proper road to a " rectifi- 
cation of the concept." 

§ 19. Again, in the affective life we find evidence of 
the working of the imitative principle. The production 
of emotion depends upon the reinstatement by associa- 
tion or action of an ideal copy. Sympathy may be 
called, however, the imitative emotion par excellence. 
My child H. cried out when I pinched a bottle-cork in 
her fifth month, and wept bitterly, in her twenty-second 
week, at the sight of a picture of a man with bowed head 
and feet in stocks. 1 In such cases the presentation is 
assimilated to memory-copies of personal suffering, and 
so calls out the motor attitudes habitual to experiences 
of pleasure- or pain-giving objects. And the motor dis- 
charges — the emotional expressions — react to define 
and deepen the emotion itself. In many cases, how- 
ever, I think, the associative order is the reverse. The 
presentation of the expression of emotion in another 
stimulates motor expression in us, and this in turn 
reacts to arouse the hedonic state which usually stimu- 
lates such" a reaction. The two cases of sympathy in 
my child, given above, illustrate the truth of both 
these accounts. 

§ 20. To speak of pleasure and pain for themselves 
— I see no way to find an absolute beginning for them 
anywhere in the course of mental development. If the 

1 The picture on p. 227 of Bissell's Biblical Antiquities. 

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PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

reactive or contractile process began without conscious- 
ness, then no doubt pleasure and pain were the first and 
simplest form of consciousness when the conditions of 
its rise were present. But if consciousness was present 
from the first, and if development depended upon the 
repetition of useful reactions, then that which through- 
out the whole animal series and in man constitutes the 
index in consciousness of profit and loss and so serves 
as its selective criterion — pleasure and pain — must 
have had the same place and rdle then as now. Other- 
wise why should it be at all? Preferring the alter- 
native which does not involve us in the question of the 
origin of consciousness — a preference for which more 
adequate reasons may be given in general philosophy — 
I think pleasure and pain must be held to be original 
accompaniments of vital reaction. 1 

§ 21. Our outcome then seems to be this, so far as 
the natural history conception is a valid one ; mental 
development on its active side might be accounted for 
on the basis of imitative repetition solely — as defined 
in the phrase "circular reaction" — provided contrac- 

1 It is sufficient to suggest at this point that as far as psycho-physical 
theories of pleasure and pain have taken account of movement, as an 
element in mental development, they are in accord with the fundamental 
conception of this paper. Meynert {Pop. wiss. Vortrdge, iii.) bases the 
distinction between pleasure and pain, in their genesis, upon the inner 
processes which minister respectively to outward movements {Angriffs- 
bewegungen) and withdrawing movements (Abwehrhewegungen) ; and Miin- 
sterberg's recent suggestive experiments (Proc. Cong. Exper. Psych., Lon- 
don meeting, p. 132 ; and Beitrage, Heft iv. pp. 216 ff. ) bear in the direction 
of a similar distinction. It is clear that, in the main, outward movements, 
expansions, would be the stimulus-repeating, imitating, pleasurable move- 
ments; and withdrawing movements, contractions, would represent les- 
sened vitality and so pain. Rigor mortis is contraction ; and something 
similar is seen in unicellular creatures in the return to the spherical form 
when death comes. 

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IMITATION: HISTORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

tility and pleasure-pain 1 may be assumed to be original 
in the first manifestations of life. 

§ 22. An interesting point comes to light when we 
ask the relation of these two factors to each other. If 
imitative function is anything like so fundamental as 
the foregoing account takes it to be — the means of 
selection among varied external stimulations — it be- 
comes evident in what sense pleasure and pain can be 
called the u object " of the reaction. Pleasure and pain 
are seen to be the index of a change brought about by a 
function. The repetition of this function is desirable, 
and this is secured by further imitation. The pleasure 
is enhanced by this repetition which aims at securing 
the continual presence of the copy ; that is to say, the 
pleasure accruing is something additional to the copy 
or "object" which the reaction aims at. 

The observation of young children directly and plainly 
confirms the truth of this position. The child invariably 
reacts at first upon objects. Suggestion, serving as a 
principle of accommodation, works regardless of the 
pleasure or pain which it gives rise to. I have illus- 
trated this elsewhere with concrete cases from infant 
life. 2 Romanes finds it in the animal world. 3 Pathology 
is full of striking illustrations of it. Further, the tran- 
sition from this naive suggestibility to the reflective 
consciousness in which pleasures and pains become con- 
siderations or ends, is marked in the life history of the 
infant. He learns to dally with his bottle, to postpone 

1 This leaves untouched the mysteries of reproduction and heredity 
over which the chemists and the philosophers are at war. See what is 
said about the limitations of the " natural history conception," below, § 29. 

2 Mental Development, chap. vi. 

8 " There is abundant evidence of one individual imitating the habits 
of another individual whether the action imitated be beneficial or useless." 
(Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 220.) 

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PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

his enjoyment, to subordinate a present to a distant 
pleasure, by a gradual process of acquired self-control. 
He gradually grows out of his neutrality to be a con- 
scious egoist ; but fortunately he learns at the same time, 
or even earlier, the elements of conscious altruism as well. 

In adult life it is undoubtedly true that we usually 
do things because we like to do them, but it is not 
always so. Just as the little child sometimes acts from 
mere suggestion, at the same time moved to tears by 
the anticipation of pain to result from it ; so to the man 
a copy may be presented so strongly for imitation, it 
may be so moving by its simple suggestiveness, that he 
acts upon it even though it have a hedonic coloring of 
pain. The principle of accommodation requires that 
it be so, for otherwise there could be no development, 
except within, the very narrow range of accidental 
discharge. No new adjustment or adaptation could 
be effected without risk of pain and damage. If the 
child never reacted in any way except those pleasurable 
ways guaranteed by his heredity or by his experience, 
how could he grow ? So if we sought only what we have 
already tasted, how could new appetites be acquired ? 1 

§ 23. There is another sphere of the operation of 
imitation into which we shall briefly enter — that of 
the social and moral. The growth of the notion of self 
is so important a genetic factor in social and moral life, 
that it may suffice to consider the influence of imita- 
tion in the development of the consciousness of self — 
an influence not sufficiently recognized. 

One of the most remarkable tendencies of the very 

1 In the chapters on " Pleasure and Pain " in my Handbook of Psychol- 
ogy (ii., chaps, v. and xi.) I have pointed out that the " well-being " theory 
of pleasure and pain must be supplemented to include reference to future 
development. 

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IMITATION: HISTORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

young child in its responses to its environment is its 
readiness to recognize differences of personality. It 
responds to what I have elsewhere called " suggestions 
of personality." x As early as the second month it 
distinguishes its mother's or nurse's touch in the dark. 
It learns characteristic methods of being held and taken 
up, of patting, kissing, etc., and adapts itself by a marvel- 
lous accuracy of protestation or acquiescence to these 
personal variations. Its associations of personality come 
to be of such importance, that for a long time its 
happiness or misery depends upon the presence of cer- 
tain kinds of personality-suggestion. Of course this 
indicates a kind of memory, and a reaction which 
imitates or seeks to reproduce useful and pleasurable 
experiences. But yet it is quite a different thing from 
the child's behavior towards things which are not 
persons. Things come to be, with some few exceptions 
which are involved in the direct gratification of appetite, 
more and more unimportant : they are subordinated to 
regular treatment or reaction. But persons become con- 
stantly more important, as uncertain and dominating 
agencies of pleasure and pain. The fact of movement 
by persons and its effects on the infant seem to be the 
most important factor in this peculiar influence ; later 
the voice comes to stand for a person's presence, and at 
last the face and its expressions are equal to the person, 
with all its attributes. 

I think this distinction between persons and things, 
between agencies and objects, is the child's very first 
step away from a personally neutral consciousness. The 
sense of uncertainty or lack of confidence grows stronger 
and stronger in its dealings with persons — an uncer- 
tainty contingent upon the moods, emotions, nuances of 

1 Science, loc. cit. 

189 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

expression and shades of treatment of the persons around 
it. A person stands for a group of experiences quite 
unstable in its prophetic as it is in its historical meaning. 
This we may for brevity of expression, assuming it to be 
first in order of development, call the "projective stage " 1 
in the growth of personal consciousness. 

Further observation of children shows that the instru- 
ment of transition from such a " projective " to a sub- 
jective sense of personality is the child's active bodily 
self, and the method of it is imitation. 

As a matter of fact, accommodation by actual mus- 
cular imitation does not arise in most children until 
about the seventh month — so utterly organic is the 
child before this, and so great is the impetus of its in- 
herited instincts and tendencies. But when the or- 
ganism is ripe, by reason of cerebral development, for 
the enlargement of its active range by new accommoda- 
tions, then he begins to imitate. And of course he 
imitates persons. Persons have become his interesting 
objects, the source of his weal or woe, his uncertain fac- 
tors. And further, persons are bodies which move. 
Among these bodies which move, which have certain 
projective attributes as described, a very peculiar and 
interesting one is his own body. It has connected with 
it certain intimate features which all others lack. Be- 
sides the inspection of hand and foot, by touch and 
sight, he has experiences in his consciousness which 
are in all cases connected with this body: strains, 
stresses, resistances, pains, etc., — an inner felt series 
along with the outer presented series. But it is only 
when a new kind of experience arises which we call 
effort — a set opposition to strain, stress, resistance, 

1 The use of this word seems to be necessary in order not to encroach 
upon the recognized meanings of the words subjective and ejective. 

190 



IMITATION: HISTORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

pain : an experience which arises, I think, first as imita- 
tive effort — that there comes that great line of cleavage 
in his experience which indicates, as I have said above, 
the rise of volition, and which separates off the series 
now first really subjective. Here is the first germinating 
nucleus of self -hood over against object-hood. Situa- 
tions before accepted simply, are now set forward, 
aimed at, wrought ; and in the fact of aiming, working, 
the fact of agency, is the sense of subject. The subject 
sense is an actuating sense. What has formerly been 
projective now becomes subjective. The associates of 
other personal bodies, the attributes which made them 
different from things, are now attached to the child's 
body with the further peculiarity of actuation. This I 
may call the subjective stage in the growth of the self- 
notion. It rapidly assimilates to itself all the other 
elements by which the child's own body differs in his 
experience from other active bodies : the passive inner 
series of pains, pleasures, strains, etc. The self suffers 
as well as acts. All get set over against lifeless things, 
and against living bodies which act but whose actions 
do not contribute to his own sense of actuation or of 
suffering. 

Again, it is easy to see what now happens. The 
child's subject-sense goes out to illuminate these other 
persons. The projective is now lighted up, claimed, 
clothed on with the raiment of self-hood, by analogy. 
The projective becomes ejective, i. e., other people's 
bodies, says the child to himself, have experiences in 
them such as mine has. This is the third stage, the 
ejective, or "social" self. 1 

1 I think an adequate apprehension of the distinctions conveyed by the 
three words " projective," " subjective," and " ejective " would banish the 
popular " psychologists' fallacy" beyond recall. 

191 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

The ego and the alter are thus born together. Both 
are crude and unreflective, largely organic, an aggregate 
of sensations prime among which are efforts, pushes, 
strains, physical pleasures and pains. And the two get 
purified and clarified together by this twofold reaction 
between project and subject, and between subject 
and eject. My sense of myself grows by imitation 
of you, and my sense of yourself grows in terms of my 
sense of myself. Both ego and alter are thus essentially 
social creations. For a long time the child's sense of 
self includes too much : the circumference of the notion 
is too wide. It includes the infant's mother, and little 
brother, and nurse, in a literal sense. To be separated 
from his mother is to lose a part of himself ; as much so 
as to be separated from a hand or foot. And he is 
dependent for his growth directly upon these sugges- 
tions which came in for imitation from his personal 
milieu. 

It will be seen by readers of R. Avenarius 1 that the 
two stages of this development correspond to the two 
stages in his process of Introjection, whereby the "hypo- 
thetical" (personal-organic) element of the naturlichen 
Weltbegriff is secured. Avenarius finds, from analytical 
and anthropological points of view, a process of attribu- 
tion, reading-in (Einlegung), by which a consciousness 
comes to interpret certain peculiarities attaching to 
those items in its experiences which represent organ- 
isms and afterwards persons. The second stage is that 
whereby these peculiarities get carried back and attached 
to its own organism (Selbst-einlegung*) ; and recognized 

1 Kritik der Reinen Erfahrung, and also der Menschliche Weltbegriff. 
The present writer judges the doctrines principally from the second-named 
work. The first is so obscurely written that one is tempted to confess a 
certain willingness to leave it unexplored. 

192 



IMITATION: HISTORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

as "subjective" (sensations, perceptions, thoughts), in 
both organisms, over against the regular " objective " 
elements contained in the rest of the world-experience. 

This general doctrine of Avenarius finds profound 
justification, I think, from the genetic sphere, as the 
two phenomena "personality-suggestion" and "imita- 
tion " indicate. The first stage is what I have called 
the "projective" stage of the self -notion in what pre- 
cedes. It is the stage in which the infant gets " person- 
ality-suggestions." It is simply the infant's way of 
getting "more copy" of a peculiar kind from its 
objective (personal) surroundings. The second stage 
is secured by imitation. The child reproduces the copy 
thus obtained, consisting of the physical signs and, 
through them, of their mental accompaniments. By 
this reproduction it " interprets " its projects as subjec- 
tive in itself, and then refers them back to the " other 
person " again. Avenarius, as far as I have been able 
to discover, has no means of passing from the first to 
the second stage, from project to subject. He speaks * 
of a certain confusion ( Verwechselung*) of the projective 
experience (T-Erfahrung) with the remaining personal 
elements in consciousness (M-Erfahrung) ; but what 
the true- leading-thread into this " confusion " and out of 
it is, he does not note. This is just what I claim the 
function of imitation does ; it supplies the bridge with 
two reaches. It enables me to pass from my experience 
of what you are, to an interpretation of what I am ; and 
then from this fuller sense of what I am, back to a fuller 
knowledge of what you are. 2 

1 Loc. cit., § 51, p. 30, and § 95, p. 49. 

2 In the use of the two facts, " personality-suggestion " and " imitation," 
my development is quite unindebted to Avenarius, who writes from the 
point of view of race history and criticism. I do not adopt the word 

13 193 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

§ 24. The two principles, habit and accommodation, 
now get application on a higher plane : a plane which is 
the theatre of the rise of moral sentiment. Again dis- 
claiming adequacy of treatment, I think some light falls 
on the growth of ethical feeling from the psychology of 
imitation. Moral sentiment arises evidently around acts 
and attitudes of will. It is accordingly to be expected 
that the account of the genesis of volition will throw 
some light upon the conditions of the rise of conscience. 
If it be true that present character is the deposit of all 
former reactions of whatever kind, and that what we 
call will is a general term for our concrete acts of 
volition; then according as these acts of volition are 
done in reference to suggestion from persons, or repre- 
sent partial expressions of personal character, there 
arises a division within the notion of self. Your 
suggestion may conflict with my desire: my desire 
may conflict with present sympathy. Self meets self, 
so to speak. It is no longer a matter of simple habit 
versus simple suggestion as is the case in infancy, 
before the self becomes a voluntary agent. It is now 

" introjection " since it covers too much ; my word " project" signifies the 
child's sense of others' personality before it has a sense of its own. The 
rest proceeds by imitation. This distinction of method raises a further 
question which should be carefully discussed in all problems for which a 
genetic solution is sought, i.e., how far the genetic process itself in the 
individual's growth has become a matter of race habit or instinct. That 
is, granted a process of origin correctly depicted, to what extent must we 
say that each new individual of the race passes through it in all its details? 
Does mental ontogenesis repeat mental phylogenesis? The origin of 
impulse and instinct illustrate the possible abbreviation of these processes 
and the starting of the individual from points of higher vantage. I am 
not prepared to say that an isolated child, for example, might not get a 
high self-notion (as he might learn to speak somehow) if deprived of all 
social suggestions ; but it would not be the self-notion that he does get. 
Cf. the note on Professor Bain's arguments to prove that imitation is not 
instinctive, below, § 28. 

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IMITATION: HISTORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

that form of habit which is personal agency coming into 
conflict with that form of suggestion which is also 
personal to me as representing my social self. Your 
example is powerful to me intrinsically ; not because it 
is abstractly good or evil, but because it represents a 
part of myself, inasmuch as I have become what I am in 
part through my sympathy with you and imitation of 
you. 

When I come to a new moral situation, therefore, my 
state is this : I am in a condition of relative equilibrium, 
or balance of two factors — my personal or habitual self, 
and my larger social suggestible self. The new experi- 
ence tends to destroy this equilibrium by reinforcing 
my " copy " on one side or the other, and so to lead me 
out for further habit or for new social adaptations. 

And now on this basis comes a new mental movement 
which seems to me to involve a further development of 
the imitative motif — a development which substitutes 
warmth and life for the horrible coldness and death of 
that view which identifies voluntary morality with sub- 
mission to a " word of command." The child, it is true, 
very soon comes across that most momentous thing in 
its moral environment which we call authority; and 
acquires that most significant thing in our moral equip- 
ment which we call obedience. He acquires obedience 
in one of two ways, or both : by suggestion or by punish- 
ment. The way of suggestion is the higher way,, 
because it proceeds by gradual lessons in accommoda- 
tion, until the habit of regularity in conduct is acquired 
in opposition to the capriciousness of his own reactions. 
It is also the better way because it sets before the child in 
an object lesson an example of that stability and lawful- 
ness which it is the end of all obedience to foster. Yet 
punishment is good and often necessary. Punishment 

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PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

is nature's way: she inflicts the punishment first, and 
afterwards nurses the insight by which the punishment 
comes to be understood. A child's capricious move- 
ment brings the pain which represents all the organic 
growth of the race ; and so when we punish a child's 
capricious conduct, we are letting fall upon him the 
pain which represents all the social and ethical growth 
of the race. But by whatever method — suggestion or 
punishment — the object is the same : to preserve the 
child until he learns from his own habit the insight 
which is necessary to his own salvation through intelli- 
gent submission. 

But whether obedience comes by suggestion or by 
punishment it has this genetic value : it leads to another 
refinement in the sense of self, at first "projective" then 
subjective. The child finds himself stimulated con- 
stantly to deny his impulses, his desires, even his irregular 
sympathies, by conforming to the will of another. This 
other represents a regular, systematic, unflinching, but 
reasonable personality — still a person, but a very dif- 
ferent person from the child's own. Here is a copy 
which is a personal authority or law. It is " projective " 
because he cannot understand it, cannot anticipate it. 
And again it is only by imitation that he is to repro- 
duce it, and so to arrive at a knowledge of what he is 
to understand it to be. So it is a copy. It is its aim — 
so might the child say, were he an adult — and should 
be mine — if I am awake to it — to have me obey it, act 
like it, think like it, be like it in all respects. It is not 
I, but I am to become it. Here is my ideal self, my 
final pattern, my "ought" set before me. Only in so 
far as I get into the habit of doing and being like it, 
get my character moulded into conformity with it, only 
so far am I good. And like all other imitative functions 

196 



IMITATION: HISTORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

it teaches its lesson only by stimulating to action. I 
must succeed in doing, if I would understand. But 
as I thus progress in doing, I for ever find new patterns 
set for me ; and so my ethical insight must always find 
its profoundest expression in that yearning which 
anticipates but does not overtake the ideal. 1 

My sense of moral ideal, therefore, is my sense of a 
possible perfect, regular will in me in which the personal 
and the social self — my habits and my social calls — 
are completely in harmony : the sense of obligation in 
me is the sense of lack of such harmony — of the actual 
discrepancies in my various thoughts of self, as my 
actions and tendencies give rise to them. And the 
thought of this ideal self, made ejective, as out of and 
beyond me — this is embodied in the moral sanctions of 
society, and finally in God. 2 

The value of the ejective sense of moral self is seen 
in the great sensitiveness we have to the supposed 
opinions of others about our conduct. It is an ingredient 
of extraordinary influence. From the account given of 
the rise of the sense of obligation, we should expect the 
two very subtle aspects of this sensitiveness which are 
actually present. First, in general, our dread and fear 
before another's fancied opinion is in direct proportion 
to our own sense of self-condemnation. Consciousness 
is clear on this point. It must be so if it is true that 
our sense of self-condemnation is of social origin, i. e., 
arises from our imitative response to the well-sanctioned 

1 Cf, the paper on " The Cosmic and the Moral," above. 

2 On the distinctively social function of imitation, Tarde and Sighele 
both dwell in the works named, the latter endeavoring to lay the foun- 
dations of a science of "collective psychology." See also, for the ex- 
tended development of the theory of the origin of the moral conscious- 
ness, the writer's Social and Eth. Interpretations (with the new matter 
added in the third edition, 1902). 

197 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

opinions and commands of others. But second, the in- 
telligent observation of the opinions of others, and the 
suffering of the penalties of social law, react back con- 
stantly to purify and elevate the standards which one 
sets himself. There is, therefore, a constant progress, 
from the action and reaction of society upon the in- 
dividual and the individual upon society. 

§ 25. In a recent article, Professor Josiah Royce 1 dis- 
tinguishes between the two earlier phases of self which 
I have pointed out, but does not develop the third. 
Yet he indicates clearly and with emphasis the twofold 
element of conflict under which the moral sense de- 
velops. The ordinary accounts on the natural history 
side, from Darwin 2 to the present, simply describe a 
conflict in consciousness between sympathy and selfish- 
ness. This fails to do justice to the "law" element in 
the genesis of morality. I should go farther than Royce 
does in emphasizing this element, believing as I do that 
there is no sense of oughtness until the child gets the 
basis laid of a habit which not only calls upon him to deny 
his private selfishness in favor of sympathy, but also 
his private sympathies in favor of reasonable regularity 
learned through submission. The opposition, between 
my regular personal ideal and all else — whether it be 
the regularity of my selfish habit or the irregularity of 
my generous responses — this is the essential condition 
of the rise of obligation. And it is in as far as this 
ought-feeling goes out beyond the copy-elements drawn 
from actual instances of action, and anticipates better 
or more ideal action, that the antithesis between the 
"ought " and the " is " has its psychological justification. 

The question whether obedience is a case of imita- 

1 International Journ. of Ethics, July, 1893, p. 430. 

2 Descent of Man, parti, chap. iii. 

198 



IMITATION: HISTORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

tion 1 is largely a matter of definition. So far as the copy 
set in the " word of command" is reproduced, the reaction 
is imitative. A child cannot obey a command to do 
what he does not know how to do. The circumstances 
of his doing it, however, the forcible presentation of the 
copy by another person, this seems only to add additional 
elements to the copy itself. The child has in view, 
when he obeys, not only the thing he is to do, but the 
circumstances — the consequences, the punishment, the 
reward — and these also he seeks to reproduce or to 
avoid. On the other hand, it may well be asked whether 
all of our voluntary imitations, and actions generally, 
are not cases of obedience ; for it is only when an idea 
gets certain force, and sanctions, and social setting, that 
it is influential in bringing us out for its reproduction. 
Of course this is only further play on definitions ; but 
it serves to indicate the real elements in the situation. 
When Tonnies says that obedience comes first and 
imitation afterwards, he refers to voluntary imitation 
of a particular type. An infant does not obey a com- 
mand until he has learned how to perform it ; and that 
suffices, with its sanctions, to give him " copy " for imita- 
tion in a broader sense. 

§ 26. It is possible, on the basis of the preceding 
development, to lay out a scheme of notions and terms 
to govern the discussion of the whole matter of imi- 
tation. This has been the " loose joint " in many 
discussions : the utter lack of any well-defined limits 
set to the phenomena in question. Tarde practically 
claims all cases of organic or social resemblance as 
instances of imitation, overlooking the truth, as one 

1 See discussion by Tarde, he. cit., and Paulhan, Revue Philosophiqne, 
Aug., 189, p. 1790: also Tonnies, PhilosopMsche Monatshefte, 1893, p. 308. 

199 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

of his critics takes pains to point out, that two things 
which resemble each other may be common effects of the 
same cause. Others are disposed to consider the volun- 
tary imitation of an action as the only legitimate case of 
imitation. We have reason to think, however, that 
volition requires a finely complex system of copy- 
elements, whose presence can be accounted for only 
on the basis of earlier imitation reactions. Further, it 
is the lower, less volitional t}^pes of mind that imi- 
tation especially characterizes. If we then say that 
imitation always involves a presentation or image of the 
situation or object imitated — a position very near 
the popular use of the term — then we have great 
difficulty in accounting for those reactions which repro- 
duce subconscious, vaguely present stimulations : for 
example, the acquisition of facial expression, the con- 
tagion of emotion, the growth of style in dress and 
institutions — what may be called the influence of the 
44 psychic atmosphere." 

I think we have found reason from the analysis above, 
to hold that our provisional definition of imitation is 
just: an imitative reaction is in its type one which 
repeats its own stimulus. This is what we find the 
nervous and muscular mechanism suited to, and this 
is what we find the organism doing in a progressive 
way in all the types of function which we have passed 
in review. If this is too broad a definition, then what I 
have traced must be given some other name, and imi- 
tation applied to any more restricted function that can 
be clearly and finally marked out. 

Adhering then to the definition which makes of 
imitation an organic type, we may point out its various 
"kinds," according to the degree in which a reaction of 
the general type has, by complication, abbreviation, sub- 

200 



IMITATION: HISTORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

stitution, inhibition, departed in the development of 
consciousness from its typical simplicity. We find in 
fact three great instances of function, all of which 
conform to the imitative type. 

First : simple contractility which reproduces its stim- 
ulus. This may be called biological imitation. 1 Under 
this head fall all cases lower down than the conscious 
picturing of copies: lower down in the sense of not 
involving, and never having involved, for their execu- 
tion, a conscious sensory or intellectual stimulus, with 
the possibility of its revival as memory. On the nervous 
side, such reactions may be called subcortical ; and in 
view of another class mentioned below, they may be 
further qualified as 'primarily subcortical. 

These " biological " reactions are evidently first in 
order of development, and represent the gains or ac- 
commodations of the organism made independently 
of the conscious picturing of copies. They represent 
organic responses which are useful for repetition. 
They serve for the accumulation of material for conscious 
and voluntary actions. In the animals, the scope of 
such action is very limited, because of the complete 
instinctive equipment which yo ung animals bring into 
the world ; but in human infants it plays an important 
part as the means of the gradual reduction to order 
and utility of the random spontaneous movements. 
I have noted its presence under the phrase " pre-imi- 
tative " or " physiological " suggestion 2 in another 
place. It is under this head that the so-called 

1 Called " organic imitation " or " circular reaction " in Mental Develop- 
ment ; the latter named term is the better. 

2 Science, xxvii., 1891, p. 113. Of course the phrase pre-imitative did 
not contemplate the broader use of the term imitation which I am now 
employing, but limited it to conscious imitation. 

201 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

" selective" function of the nervous system finds its 
first illustration. 1 

Second : we pass to 'psychological or cortical imita- 
tions. The criterion of imitation — the copy for repro- 
duction — is here preserved in the shape of conscious 
sensations and images. The copy becomes consciously 
available in two ways : first, as sensation, which the imita- 
tive reaction seeks to continue or reproduce (as the imita- 
tion of words heard, movements seen, etc.); and second, 
as memory. In this latter case there arises desire, in 
which there is consciousness of the imitative tendency 
as respects an agreeable memory- copy; and with the 
persistence of such a copy, and its partial repression 
by other elements of memory, comes volition. We find, 
accordingly, two kinds of psychological or cortical 
imitation, which I have called in the article already 
quoted 2 respectively " simple " and " persistent " imita- 
tion. Simple imitation is the sensory-motor or ideo- 
motor suggestion which reproduces its own stimulus ; 
and persistent imitation is the " try-try-again " experi- 
ence of early volition. 

Third: a great class of facts which we may well 

1 This distinction between young children and the young of animals 
gives us the reason that we do not find clear imitations as common 
among the animals as we should expect — monkeys and parrots possibly 
excepted. In the words of Preyer (Physiologie des Embryos, p. 545), 
" the more kinds of co-ordinated movement an animal brings into the 
world, the fewer is he able to learn afterwards/' The child is par ex- 
cellence the animal that learns ; and if imitation is the way to learn, he 
has " chosen the better part " in being more imitative than the rest. 
Animal imitativeness is generally understated, however — cf. the remark- 
able performances of dogs, cats, birds, etc., in the way of imitation in 
Romanes' Evol. of Mind in Animals, chap. xiv. The most social animals, 
including man, are the most imitative, as we should expect ; since both 
sociability and imitation are connected with what we have called" person- 
ality-suggestion." 

2 " The Origin of Volition," above. 

202 



IMITATION: HISTORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

designate by the term plastic or secondarily-subcortical 
imitation, i. e., all the cases of stimulus-repeating re- 
action which once represented conscious adaptation, 
but have become what is ordinarily called " secondary- 
automatic " and subconscious. These cases we have 
found readily explainable by the hypothesis of lapsed 
links in the memory copy system, or, put more shortly, 
by the principle of habit. So we find under this head- 
ing such fundamental facts for social psychology as the 
social phenomena of contagion, fashion, mob-law, which 
Tarde and Sighele so well emphasize, the imitation of 
facial and emotional expression, moral influence, organic 
sympathy, personal rapport, etc. The term plastic 
serves to point out the rather helpless condition of the 
person who imitates, and by so doing interprets in his 
own action the more intangible influences of his estate 
in life. 1 

§ 27. Before concluding, I wish to draw attention to 
certain more obscure instances of imitation, and assign 
them their place in the general scheme of development. 

The social instances noticed at length by Tarde, and 
summarized under so-called " laws," are easily reduced 
to more general principles. Tarde enunciated a law 
based on the fact that people copy thoughts and 
opinions before they copy dress and customs : i. e., 
" imitation proceeds from the internal to the external." 
As far as this is true it is only partialh r imitation. 
Thoughts and opinions are copied because they are 
most important ; and as the copier thinks with another 

1 An extremely subtle and interesting phenomenon under this head 
is that usually described as the influence of example on personal belief. 
What we call persuasion is largely the suggestion of the emotion which 
accompanies strong conviction, with the corresponding influence which 
the emotion suggested has upon the logical relationships apprehended 
by the victim. 

203 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

he acts with him, since like thought produces like 
conduct. But in fact is there such a general truth? 
American ladies take their styles in dress from the 
French, bat they do not defer to the sentiments 
of French social circles ; • they rather imitate in litera- 
ture and higher things the opinions of the English, 
whose dress they consider inferior. Further, a child 
imitates persons, and what he copies most largely are 
the personal points of evidence, so to speak ; the boldest, 
most external manifestations, not the inner essential 
mental things. It is only as he grows to make a con- 
scious distinction between thought and action that he 
gives the former a higher valuation. 

Again, Tarde's laws relative to imitation mode and 
imitation coutume — the former having in its eye the 
new, fashionable, and popular, the fad; the latter, the 
old, venerable, and customary — are so clearly partial 
statements of the principles of accommodation and 
habit, as they get application on a broader social scale, 
that it is not necessary to dwell further upon them. 1 

The phenomena of hypnotism illustrate most strikingly 
the reality of imitation at a certain stage of mental life. 
Delboeuf makes it probable 2 that the characteristic 
peculiarities of the " stages " of the Paris school are due 
to this influence ; and the wider question may well be 
opened whether suggestion generally, as understood in 
hypnotic work, might not be better expressed by some 
formula which recognizes the fundamental sameness of 
all reactions — normal, pathological, hypnotic, degenera- 
tive — which exhibit the form of stimulus-repeating or 
" circular " process characteristic of simple imitation. In 

1 Tarde's other principle that "inferiors imitate superiors" is clearly a 
corollary from the view that the progressive ideal personality arises 
through social suggestion. 

2 Revue Philosophique, xxii. pp. 146 ff. 

204 



IMITATION: HISTORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

normal, personal, and social suggestion the copy 
elements are in part unrecognized, and their reactions 
are subject to inhibition and blocking-off by the various 
voluntary and complicated tendencies which have the 
floor. In sleep, the copy elements are largely spontane- 
ous images thrown up by the play of association or 
stimulated by outside trivialities, and all so weak that 
while action follows in the dream-persons, it does not 
follow in the dreamer's own muscles. In hypnotic 
somnambulism all copy elements are from the outside, 
thrown in ; the inner fountains are blocked ; action 
follows upon idea, whatever it is. Even the idea of no 
action is acted out by the lethargic, and the idea of fixed 
action by the cataleptic. 1 And all the vagaries of Luys 
himself get " demonstrated " with reality enough, because 
Luys sets the "copy." Further, in certain cases of 
madness (folie a deux, etc.) the afflicted patient acts out 
responses to a certain personal copy which has become 
fixed in the progress of the disease, and perhaps has 
aided in its production. 2 In all these cases, the peculiar 
character of which is the performance, under conditions 
commonly called those of aboulia, 3 of reactions which 
require the muscular co-ordinations usually employed 
by voluntary action, we have illustrations of " plastic " 

1 It may be well to quote Janet's summary of his determinations of 
the characteristic features of general catalepsy, <all of which indicate a 
purely imitative condition of consciousness, Aut. Psych., p. 55 : " The 
different phenomena which we have described are these, i. e., the continu- 
ation of an attitude or a movement, the repetition of movements which 
have been seen and of sounds which have been heard, the harmonious 
association of the members and of their movements." 

2 Cf. Falret, Etudes cliniques sur les maladies mentales et nerveuses, p. 
547. 

8 This would involve a doctrine which holds that in the hypnotic state, 
there is inhibition of the cortical associative or synthetic function, but not 
of the simple cortical sense function : cf. Gurney's remarks on Heiden- 
hain's explanation of " hypnotic mimicry" in Mind, -1884, p. 493. 

205 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

imitation. On the pathological side, we find, in aphasic 
patients who cannot write or speak spontaneously, but 
who still can copy handwriting and speak after another, 
cases which illustrate the same kind of defect yet in 
which the defect is not general, but rather confined to 
a particular group of reactions by reason of a circum- 
scribed lesion. 

§ 28. An examination of Professor Bain's forceful 
arguments against the view that imitation is an 
"instinct" 1 will suffice, finally, to set out clearly the 
via media which the conception of this paper suggests. 2 
Bain's definition of imitation assigns it a place (the 
fourth stage) among the acquired reactions which con- 
tribute to the development of volition. Imitation is 
always voluntary, i. e., a conscious repetition of a pictured 
copy due to association. 3 The argument first advanced 
to disprove instinctive imitation is this : if imitation 
were an instinct it would appear earlier in infant life 
than it does (second half-year). 4 This fact, however, 

1 Using instinct in the sense of what is native — not acquired. " Im- 
pulsive " is better than " instinctive " throughout. 

a Bain, Senses and Intellect, pp. 413 ff. (3rd ed.). Professor Bain has 
somewhat modified his view in his later (4th) edition. 

3 Ibid., pp. 411 and 413, also 417. 

4 Professor Sully, The Human Mind, ii. 218, also makes this point. 
Sully makes the following statements in three successive paragraphs ; I 
am quite unable to reconcile them except by modifying them all into con- 
formity with a deeper-going theory of the imitative reaction. (I have 
ventured to insert in the square brackets after each of these quotations 
the paragraphs in this paper which bear on it — supposing my general 
definition of imitation to be correct). He says (loc. cit., 218) : " Since it 
only begins to appear about the fourth month, when simple voluntary action 
directed towards an end is also first recognizable, it is possible that imi- 
tation is acquired " Q§ 28] : then (219), " As a rapid reaction of a sensori- 
motor form, it has the look of a mechanical process ... in many cases 
there seems to be no conscious purpose. . . . There is much to favor the 
view that it is purely ideo-motor and so subvolitional " £§§ 11-13 and 26] : 
then (219 note), " It is pointed out by Gurney that imitation plays a conspic- 

206 



IMITATION: HISTORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

may be accounted for on grounds which still leave a 
balance of inherited organic ( u biological " and so in- 
stinctive) imitations. The child's early months are 
taken up with its vegetative functions. Further, acci- 
dental imitations struck by him cannot give pleasure 
until the senses are sharpened to discern them, and until 
the attention is capable of its operations of comparison, 
co-ordination, etc. ; before this there is no element of 
pleasure to lend its influence for the continuance of an 
imitation. As soon as these conditions get fulfilled, we 
find not only that the child begins to show germinal 
imitations, such as the monotonous repetition of its own 
vocal performances (ma-ma-ma-), but also that its 
nervous connections give it an instinctive tendency to 
biological subconscious reactions, distinctly of the imi- 
tative type^ i. e., the walking alternation of the legs. 
In the main, therefore, there is instinctive tendency to 
functions of the imitative type and to some few organic 
imitations ; but those clear conscious imitations which 
represent new accommodations and acquirements (and 
it is these which Bain, by definition, has in view) are 
not instinctive. Infants show remarkable differences in 
the readiness and facility with which they learn to 
speak. This does not arise from difference in practice, 
for practice never overcomes the difference ; but it is 
due to differences in the native tendencies of the in- 

uous part in the hypnotic state " £§ 27] : and again (219-220), " Imitation 
follows on the persistence of motor-ideas having a pleasurable interest. . . . 
The child does not imitate all the actions it sees, but only certain ones 
which specially impress it. . . . Hence in most, at least, of a child's imita- 
tion there is a rudiment of desire. For the rest, the abundant imitative 
activity of early life illustrates the strength of the playful impulse, of the 
disposition to indulge in motor activity for the sake of its intrinsic pleasur- 
ableness " (italics his) £§§ 22 and 28]. Again (109), he makes imitative 
sympathy instinctive fj§§ 19 and 26]. 

207 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

fants to a reaction which is, par excellence, imitative in 
its type and method of development." 1 

On this basis it is possible to admit the truth of the 
remaining points of Bain's text, 2 at the same time that 
we recognize a great class of quite involuntary sensori- 
motor and ideo-motor, as purely biological reactions 
which fall under the imitative type, and which repre- 
sent instinctive inherited tendencies to movement. In 
more undeveloped consciousness, further, we find that 
the purely suggestive influence of a " copy " for imitation 
may be so strong that reactions follow despite their 
painful character : a fact which would be impossible 
on the theory that all voluntary action is acquired 
under lead of the pleasure-pain association. The law 
of habit, which exhibits itself in the inherited motor 
tendencies I have spoken of, is in these cases too strong 
for the law of accommodation through pleasure-pain, 
and works itself out in conduct in opposition to warn- 
ings of temporary damage to the organism. 

§ 29. The place of imitation has now been made out 
in a tentative way throughout the development of the 
active life. It seems to be everywhere. But it is, of 
course, a matter of natural history that this type of 
action is of such extraordinary and unlooked-for im- 
portance. If we grant evolution of mind, circular reac- 
tion of the imitative type may be considered one of 
the principal laws of the progressive interaction of the 
organism and its environment. The further philo- 
sophical questions as to the nature of mind, its worth 
and its dignity, of course remain over. We have 
learned too much in modern philosophy to argue from 

1 The same may be said of handwriting. Cf. Romanes, Merit. Ev. 
in An., p. 194. 

2 Points which I have also contended for as illustrating the pains- 
taking and tentative stages in the development of voluntary movement 
through imitation. 208 



IMITATION: HISTORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

the natural history of a thing to its ultimate consti- 
tution and meaning. So far as there is a more general 
lesson to be learned from the considerations advanced, 
it is that we should avoid just this danger, *. g., of inter- 
preting one kind of existence for itself, in an isolated 
way, without due regard to other kinds of existence with 
which its manifestations are mixed up. The antithesis, 
for example, between the self and the world is not a 
valid antithesis psychologically considered. The self is 
realized by taking in " copies " from the world, and the 
world is enabled to set higher copies only through the 
constant reactions of the individual self upon it. 
Morally I am as much a part of society as physically I 
am a part of the world's fauna ; and as my body gets its 
best explanation from the point of view of its place in a 
zoological scale, so morally I occupy a place in the 
social order ; and an important factor in the under- 
standing of me is the understanding of it. 

The philosophical question is — when put in the 
phraseology of imitation — What is the final World- 
copy, and how did it come to be set ? x 

1 It will be remarked that this whole paper deals with what may be 
called "representative copies" as opposed to " constructive copies," that 
is, it avoids the question of invention versus imitation, except in so far as to 
hold (§§ 15, 18), that the material of mental construction is always repre- 
sentative, part of the memory copy system. The further question of how 
this material can get shaped into new forms of invention, artistic arrange- 
ment, constructive thought, through imitation — this question remains 
over. It is not generally seen, however, that this question, as referring to 
consciousness, is one with the broader question of natural history versus 
special creation everywhere. Put broadly : how is it possible for anything 
to arise in Nature which is absolutely new to Nature in its function, yet 
fitted to utilize Nature and to survive in it 1 I have indicated elsewhere 
(" The Origin of Volition," above) the possible application of the natural 
history conception to one of these difficult problems, that of voluntary 
movement. (The general topic of "Invention" is taken up for detailed 
treatment in Social and Ethical Interpretations.) 
14 209 



X 

THE ORIGIN" OF EMOTIONAL EXPRESSION * 

Recent discussion has brought out certain great facts 
about the psycho-physics of emotion. The service of 
the "peripheral" theory as announced by Lange and 
James, and especially as argued by the latter, has been 
to set this problem in evidence. Undoubtedly the stim- 
ulating and highly valuable influence of James' treat- 
ment — here as on many other points — has been due to 
a certain frankness and naive clearness which has con- 
cealed in a measure the real complexity of the problem. 

The outcome of a discussion in which this " peri- 
pheral " theory has had able but, I think, very inade- 
quate criticism takes form about two or three general 
principles which it may be well to state in their general 
bearing upon the origin of emotional expression. It 
has been evident from the first that the " emotion " that 
the peripheralists are talking about is a phenomenon of 
endowment — something that a baby already has ; and 
that the emotion that the adversaries of the theory are 
talking about is a phenomenon of ideas — something 
that the baby has yet to get. If this be true — and no 
one denies the distinction in fact, apart from the terms 
which have hopelessly obscured it — it becomes just as 
evident that the question as to what the components of 
emotion are is really a genetic question. All the ele- 

1 From the Psychological Review, I., 1894, p. 610. 
210 



THE ORIGIN OF EMOTIONAL EXPRESSION 

merits of the problem of the genesis of reactions — that 
of the laws of motor development — must be recognized 
and woven into an adequate theory. This is what I 
mean by saying that the " effect " theory of emotion is 
naive — just as much so as is the older " cause " theory. 

When, then, we come to take a broad survey of motor 
development, in the race no less than in the child, we 
are able to signalize certain great principles which we 
must recognize : principles which stand out in biology 
and in psychology as essential to the theory of genesis. 
The range of facts fairly shown by recent discussion to 
be available for the genetic theory of emotion-reactions 
may be stated under three such principles. These are 
Habit, used broadly to include the effects of repetition 
and hereditary accumulation (whatever theory of the 
latter we may adopt) ; Accommodation, the law of indi- 
vidual adaptation in all evolution, no matter how adap- 
tation is secured; and, earliest and most fundamental, 
Dynamogenesis, expressing the fact simply of regular 
connection between the sensory and motor functions of 
all living organisms, as to amount of process. 

I. As for the fact of dynamogenesis : who doubts its 
force ? I have been so sure of it that I have made 
it the ever-present fact in the whole analysis of the 
"motor consciousness." 1 Fouille'e writes an entire 
treatise to expound it. 2 And as for the advocates of 
the theory of emotion now in question, no one has 
done more to prove this truth of dynamogenesis than 
Fe*re, 3 and no one more to illustrate it than James. 4 

But what bearing has this principle upon the theory 
of emotion ? Much every way. We must bear in mind 
that this principle has always operated, and is always 

1 See my Feeling and Will, Part IV. 2 Psychologic des Id&s-Forces. 
3 Recherches sur la Sensibilite. 4 Principles of Psychology. 

211 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

operating, in every reaction we make ; that our reactions 
have grown to be what they are in all cases by direct 
reflection of what we have received or experienced; 
that just as certain as it is that we are experiencing 
new things every instant of our lives, just so cer- 
tain is it that we are expressing these new experiences 
through the actions that we perform. Every one is 
familiar with Professor James' view that we never have 
the same idea or content twice. Of course we do not. 
But the correlative fact has not had recognition. As 
we never experience the same twice, so we never act the 
same twice. The new x of content, added to the old c 
of content, must call out a new y of action, added to 
the old a of action. If then our new reaction is always 
a + ?/, just as the content which it follows upon is c + #, 
then no reaction is ever that and that only which is guar- 
anteed by habit, or inheritance, or what not, from the 
past. So it cannot be that emotion is nothing but the 
" effect " in consciousness of such processes of habit. 

It is easy to see, however, that the " effect " advocate 
has a way of escape from any such easy trap. He admits 
it all, and adds a pertinent view. He distinguishes 
content + its expression from content -{-feeling of its 
expression ; saying that there is no consciousness or 
feeling of the new element, ?/, of motor process until it 
is itself reported as a new element of sensory content. 
Quite possible ; it may be so — if the nervous system has 
developed that way. But the question whether it has 
developed that way resolves itself into the more theo- 
retical one, how could it develop that way ? That is, 
assuming that it has, what view must we then hold as 
to the actual mode which the organism has of acquiring 
reactions to new elements of content; or, in short, of 
acquiring any new reactions ? This clearly takes us 

212 



THE ORIGIN OF EMOTIONAL EXPRESSION 

into the domain of another of the principles of develop- 
ment mentioned above, Accommodation. But before 
we turn to that, certain deductions favorable to the 
theory in question may be shown by what precedes to be 
necessary from the third of our principles, Habit. 

II. It is now evident that the stimulation to a motor 
reaction of any kind has always two factors : one the 
discharges fixed by habit, and the other those aroused by 
the new elements of content presented by the environ- 
ment. But we know that habit tends to make reactions 
automatic and reflex ; and that consciousness tends to 
evaporate from such reactions. As I put it formerly, 
"psychologically, it [habit] means loss of oversight, 
diffusion of attention, subsiding consciousness." x Hence 
we must admit that the reactions most dominated by 
habit — the smoothest, best inherited, most instinctive 
reactions — have least consciousness. And, on the other 
hand, where habit is least influential, where the content 
is largely new, where the pleasure or pain of its assimi- 
lation is great, where attention and effort are strained, 
where excitement runs high — in all these cases the 
stimulating influence is new, one which has not yet been 
brought under the influence of habit, and so one which 
adds new dynamogenic processes to the reaction. 

It turns out, however, that just those " expressive " 
reactions which are most instinctive and reflex (fear, 
anger, joy, etc.) really do carry with them most of 
the consciousness which we call emotion — certainly 
vivid and disturbed enough. What then shall we say ? 
Either that there are other new elements of content 
additional to the regular antecedents of the reflex ; or 
that the emotion is not the antecedent of the expression 
at all, but that the reverse is true — the emotion is con- 

1 Feeling and Will, p. 49. 

213 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

sequent upon the expression. We cannot hold to the 
former alternative. Where are the adequate stimulants 
in conscious content to the newly-hatched chick's reac- 
tions of fear? So we must take the other alterna- 
tive, and Jiayid over all this class of reactions to the effect 
theory, admitting that the emotion, as far as it has fixed 
instinctive forms of expression, follows upon the ex- 
pression. I have no hesitation, therefore, in adopting 
the " effect " theory of Lange and James as regards 
inherited emotional expression excited by constant defi- 
nite objects of presentation — so far as the force of 
this argument goes. 

This case presents, therefore, no exception to the law 
of expression, i. e., the law that that which is habitual 
is accompanied by least consciousness. The high con- 
sciousness is a reflex effect. But we should expect, on 
the other hand, that in all the ideal states of mind, in 
all the new complications of content to which the atten- 
tion has to be adjusted, in all emotional states which do 
not attach immediately* and unreflectively to conscious 
objects of presentation, — that in all these cases the ex- 
citing processes should arouse elements of expression 
over and above the reactions due to habit. This is 
really the outcome — and I think about the only out- 
come — of the numerous criticisms of James recently 
made from different points of view. 

But it should be remembered that a claim is still open 
to the " effect " theorist, as was said above ; namely, that 
even though this be true, still the central process at the 
base of it may not itself come into consciousness as emo- 
tion. It may come into consciousness only as presenta- 
tion, attention, etc., the emotion-consciousness not arising 
until the reaction thus stimulated is reported back from 
the periphery. But, again, this whole question of the 

214 



THE ORIGIN OF EMOTIONAL EXPRESSION 

behavior of the organism in the presence of the intel- 
lectually new as opposed to the habitual is only another 
stage of the question spoken of above ; i.e., the behavior 
of the organism in the presence of new sense-stimula- 
tions. How has the organism been able to acquire new 
reactions of any kind f — a genetic question and a 
fundamental one. This leads again to the principle of 
Accommodation, to which I now turn. 

III. The principle of " accommodation " — the in- 
dividual phase of the biological problem of adaptation 
in evolution — is the most urgent, difficult, and neg- 
lected question of the new genetic psychology. How 
can consciousness ever, under any circumstances, get a 
new and better-adapted function? In answer to this 
question there has been only one theory in the field, that 
of Bain, in the latest formulation of which he shows its 
conformity to evolution requirements. Spencer's theory 
is purely biological and seems to be open to some of the 
modifications (and more) suggested by Bain in the fol- 
lowing passage, 1 which is his latest utterance, I think : 

" My leading postulates — Spontaneity, the continuing 
of an action that gives pleasure, and the contiguous growth 
of an accidental connection — are all involved in Mr. 
Spencer's explanation of the development of our activ- 
ity. . . . The spontaneous commencement is expressed by 
him as a diffused discharge of muscular energy (Psychol- 
ogy, Vol. I. p. 544). He considers that as nervous structures 
become more complicated, every special muscular excite- 
ment is accompanied by some general muscular excitement. 
Along with the concentrated discharge to particular muscles, 
the ganglionic plexuses inevitably carry off a certain dif- 
fused discharge to the muscles at large ; and this diffused 

1 Emotions and Will, 3d ed. 1888, pp. 318 f. The passage is substantially 
the same in the 4th ed. 

215 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

discharge may lead to the happy movement suitable to 
some emergency. 

" This is the doctrine of Spontaneity in a very contracted 
shape ; too contracted in my judgment for the requirements 
of the case. I have adverted to the inferiority of the dif- 
fused wave accompanying a central process, whether active 
or emotional, such as is here assumed. If another source 
of chance muscular movements can be assigned, and if 
that source presents advantages over the diffused dis- 
charge, we ought to include it in our hypothesis. . . . Mr. 
Darwin expresses what is tantamount to the spontaneity of 
movement thus : t When the sensorium is strongly excited, 
the muscles of the body are generally thrown into violent 
action/ ' Involuntary and purposeless contractions of the 
muscles of the chest and glottis, excited in the above 
manner, may have first given rise to the emission of vocal 
sounds " (Expression, pp. 82, 83) . This is spontaneous 
commencement under circumstances of strong excitement ; 
but I have endeavored to show that excitement is un- 
necessary, and that spontaneity is a fact of the ordinary 
working of the organs. 

" The second indispensable requisite to voluntary acqui- 
sition, as well as to the consolidation of instinctive powers, 
is some force that clenches and confirms some successful 
chance coincidence. Mr. Spencer's view of this operation 
is given thus : ' After success will immediately come 
pleasurable sensations with an accompanying large draught 
of nervous energy towards the organs employed/ 'The 
lines of communication through which the diffused dis- 
charge happened in this case to p^ass have opened a new 
way to certain wide channels of escape ; and consequently 
they have suddenly become lines through which a larger 
quantity of molecular motion is drawn, and lines which are 
so rendered more permeable than before/ 

"Here is assumed the Law of Pleasure and Pain. Pleas- 
ure is accompanied by heightened nervous energy, which 

216 



THE ORIGIN OF EMOTIONAL EXPRESSION 

nervous energy finds its way to the lines of communication 
that have been opened up by the lucky coincidence. There 
is assumed as a consequence the third of the above postu- 
lates — the contiguous adhesion between the two states, 
the state of feeling and the appropriate muscular state. 
The physical expression given by Mr. Spencer to this 
result is, I have no doubt, correct — •' the opening up of 
lines of discharge that draw off large amounts of molecular 
motion.' " 

Bain's three postulates touch the inevitable require- 
ments of a theory, i. e., first, to get movements (his 
" spontaneity " as a substitute for Spencer's " diffused 
discharge" and Darwin's " purposeless contractions"); 
second, to get selections made from these movements 
(his " accidental success " of certain movements) ; and 
third, " some force that clenches and confirms some suc- 
cessful chance coincidence " (" pleasure and pain," identi- 
fied with Spencer's "heightened nervous energy which 
finds its way to the lines of communication that have 
been opened up by the lucky coincidence"). 

I do not intend to go into a criticism of this scheme 
in detail, especially as I intend soon to publish a book 
containing a detailed theory of accommodation. 1 But it 
is evident that the truth — if it be true — of " spon- 
taneity " in developed organisms does not invalidate or 
even supersede Spencer's " diffused discharge " ; for the 
phylogenetic explanation of spontaneity — the question 
how did spontaneity arise — must rest on some such 
hypothesis as Spencer's. But the question comes : given 
movements — by either of these principles, both, or 
neither — how are some of them selected and preserved ? 

1 Merit. Development in the Child and the Race, 1st ed. 1895. A sketch 
of some of its features may be read in the paper on Imitation preceding 
this. 

217 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

Here again the answer comes from both authors : the 
fitness of those selected, by the operation of some sort of 
selection to movements overproduced in quantity. This 
we may admit as most likely. But now — and here we 
reach our topic again, emotion — how are these success- 
ful, good, advantageous movements kept up ? " Pleasure 
and pain" is at once on everybody's lips, Bain's, Spencer's, 
et al. But how ? Evidently by association, we are told. 
The lucky movement gives pleasure ; it is done again 
to secure the pleasure again. But we may say : for an 
association one term must be given ; either the pleasure 
to bring up the movement, or the movement to bring up 
the pleasure. We must have the presence of the one 
in some kind of " organic memory " in order to get the 
presence of the other. How does the organism get 
started toward either? Here Mr. Spencer's theory, on 
t^he organic side, gives us an answer; and Bain, as it 
seems to me, adopts it as a supplement, in the quotation 
made above from his third edition, directly from Spencer. 
"Here is assumed," says Bain, "the 'law of pleasure and 
pain' [whereby] pleasure is accompanied by heightened 
nervous energy, which nervous energy finds its way to 
the lines of communication that have been opened up by 
the lucky coincidence." This leads to the repetition of 
the pleasure-going action in what I call a " circular " 
way. 

Let us say, then, that something equivalent to 
" heightened nervous energy " alone can explain the 
repetition of useful and pleasurable reactions. After 
sufficient criticism and definition — which are now re- 
served — we may call this for convenience the principle 
of " Excess Discharge," and say that pleasure and pain 
can be agents of accommodation and development only 
if the one, pleasure, carry with it the phenomenon of 

218 



THE ORIGIN OF EMOTIONAL EXPRESSION 

" excess discharge," and the other, pain, the reverse — 
probably some form of inhibition or of antagonistic con- 
traction. On this basis Darwin's well-known "laws" 
of the origin of emotional expression have their 
application. 1 

What has this to do with emotion? Again, mnch 
every way. The heightened nervous energy may not be 
— without further argument now out of place — as- 
sumed to be the " excitement of emotion " ; and we may 
be dealing only with the pleasure-pain process: but 
even so, our analogy is worth something. Let us ask 
this question : where in the entire series of events — 
stimulus, central process, reaction — has the pain come 
in, before or after the first adapted movement, — the pain, 
that is, which has an inhibiting influence on this move- 
ment? The whole phraseology of Spencer and Bain 
would serve to make us think that it came in after the 
movement only, as part of the effect of the movement, so 
that, by the memory of the pain thus got, the movement 
is inhibited. The pain arising from the movement serves 
in memory to warn us not to repeat the movement. 2 But 
here I take issue blankly, contending that it comes in by 
and with the stimulus and before its discharge in movement, 
warning us not to move so as to repeat that stimulus. It is 
by this effect that the first adaptive movement is secured. 

Let us take for scrutiny the customary illustration — 
the one which James uses in explaining the " Meynert 
scheme " of nervous action. A child thrusts his finger 
in a candle-flame, and is burned : he thrusts no more, but 
shrinks. Here the doctrine of Spencer, Bain, and many 

1 Cf. two articles by Professor Dewey in The Psychological Review, 
Nov. 1894, and Jan. 1895. 

2 In support of this construction, see Spencer, Prin. of Psych, vol. i., 
§§ 227 f., §§ 232, 237. Bain's view is given in the quotation made above. 

219 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

others, seems to make the function of the pain the 
inhibition of the thrusting movement, as itself undesir- 
able. But surely the case is very different. The in- 
hibiting effect and the pain are brought about by the 
burn, and the recurrence of that — ■ that is the thing to be 
prevented. The thrusting movement is a mere incident. 
Suppose the candle is brought up against the child in- 
stead of the reverse : m it then shrinks from it just the 
same. The movement of the former case is inhibited, to 
be sure ; but only because that is the way the developed 
organism has learned to escape damaging stimulations in 
general. But how it got this way of escaping them, that 
I contend is just what we are trying to explain — the 
fact of habitual expression. The real question is : how 
did the organism learn to withdraw ? And the answer 
must be : the pain must have originally preceded the 
adaptive movement — as a signal of an injury. And 
this original differential motor effect of stimulations can 
only have been acquired by some form of selection. 

We cannot simply leave the organism to the risks of 
getting repetitions of stimulus by accident; for that 
means that the organism waits the second time for the 
lucky chance, just as it did the first time : and that is to 
say that the pleasure of the first experience left no effect 
which by its mere presence could increase the chance of 
good luck. 

So it follows that, as we had to hand over to the 
" effect " theory all the instinctive expressions, as being 
so reflex that there is no consciousness of them until 
their organic resonance is borne back to the centres, so 
now we see that in its origin each and every one of them 
was directly expressive of a state of consciousness, under 
the law of accommodation by pleasure and pain. These 
expressions have grown up, by such principles as Dar- 

220 



TEE ORIGIN OF EMOTIONAL EXPRESSION 

win's, as accretions to habit; bnt only because they at 
first followed definite pleasure-pain processes, and were 
each and all at first accommodations. 

This principle applies also to all the organic, visceral, 
ccensesthetic sensations so vital to many emotions. For 
we are of course driven to ask how it comes that habitual 
reactions, by becoming more reflex and hence less 
conscious, come to give, nevertheless, by their return 
wave upon consciousness, such overpowering floods of 
organic feeling. I think it is due to the fact that it was 
by muscular movement that such violent often long-con- 
tinued protective or offensive reactions were carried out. 
This exhaustive muscular process taxed for its mainte- 
nance all the organic processes — heart, lungs, etc., — so 
that a great mass of organic sensations were thrown into 
consciousness, and by unbroken association have come to 
stand themselves, in union with muscular sensations, for 
the damaging or beneficial kinds of stimulation which at 
first excited pleasure or pain. And so far as they were 
themselves exhausting and devitalizing, they were 
directly painful. It is common doctrine that in our 
more violent organic reactions in emotion, the organism 
is recapitulating in amount the wear and tear of the long 
process of offence or defence that animal forms were 
accustomed to go through when they met the objects 
which now excite these emotions and sensations in us. 

My charge therefore is this : the " effect" theory cannot 
be true from the point of view of the evolution or 
phylogeny of the pleasure-pain consciousness. And 
the argument is this : If (1) our theory makes use of 
pleasure and pain as an agent of development, it must 
make this pleasure and pain in the beginning antecedent 
to the reactions which stand for the adaptations secured 
by the pleasure and pain. The Spencer-Bain theory 

221 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

makes memories of pleasure or pain antecedent to the 
repetition or inhibition of movements, but it recognizes 
no pleasure or pain qua stimulus to the original adaptive 
movements ; accordingly we have a dualism in the account 
of development, i.e., pleasure-pain securing adaptations, 
and pleasure-pain emotions resulting from adaptations. 
No doubt both of these are true as facts in developed or- 
ganisms : but we are now talking about origins. One of 
them must be original. 1 As I have said before succinctly : 
" The analogies from sensuous feeling [sense-pleasures] 
are all in favor of the central origin of emotion [idea- 
pleasures]. No one holds that sensations are felt only 
as far as they have motor expression. The kinesthetic 
theory accordingly forfeits unity in its account of [the 
development of] sensibility." 2 If (2) the effect theory 
does not make use of pleasure and pain as agents of devel- 
opment, then it owes us a theory of development both of 
sensibility and of motor acquisition, for it throws away 
the Spencer-Bain theory. Such a theory would have to 
rest, so far as I see, upon "lucky" chance alone, going 
back to Bain's early view — before, he supplemented it 
with Spencer's " diffused nervous discharge " '■ — and de- 
veloping all movement, voluntary as well as reflex, by 
simple chance repetition with association. Yet this, as I 
have urged above, makes an illicit use of the principle of 
association. 

But this last is the view advocated by biologists; 
even those who, as in a recent case, 3 appeal to psychology 

1 See the reference to Marshall's " dualism " below. James attempts 
to bring the sense-pleasures and pains under his theory, in a recent dis- 
cussion (cf the " postscript " to this paper). 

2 Feeling and Will, p. 256. Cf. the detailed criticism of James by 
Worcester, in Monist, Jan., 1893, p. 285. 

3 Orr, Theory of Heredity and Development, pp. 95-101, who bases his 
theory of development upon the psychological principles "repetition" and 

222 



THE ORIGIN OF EMOTIONAL EXPRESSION 

for analogies of development. I have before admitted 
the possibility of snch a theoretical view, as regards some 
slight organic development; but I think with Spencer, 
Bain, and others, that it fails to account for any very 
complex motor acquisitions. It emasculates higher psy- 
chological theory by throwing over the teleological func- 
tion of pleasure and pain — just the one thing which 
comes into clear consciousness in this matter of develop- 
ment. On such points I think psychologists may give 
some wholesome instruction to the biologists. 

The place of sense-pleasures and pains, therefore, in 
my genetic theory, throws light at once upon the theory 
of emotional expression. Such pleasures and pains are not 
only indices of organic weal or woe ; they are also dyna- 
mogenic agents of accommodation, by a direct influence 
upon muscular movement. 1 And the very same consider- 
ations apply also to ideal pleasures and pains, those, e. g., 
which cluster about phases of attention, ideation, and 
object-consciousness generally. Intellect could not have 
developed in the first place, nor have become the magnifi- 
cent engine of organic accommodation, through volition, 
which it is, if intellectual, aesthetic, and ethical pleasures 
were only the resonance of instinct-reflexes. Yet even 
here many of the qualitative marks, the excitement, the 
main psychosis apart from the pleasures and pains of 
new apprehensions, knowledges, curiosities, are just as 
surely, and for the same genetic reasons, the resonance of 
instinct-reflexes as are the gross fixed expressions of 
anger, fear, etc., in animals. 

" association," and takes no note of the value of pleasure and pain, or 
their nervous equivalent, in the process. 

1 I have elsewhere insisted (Feeling and Will, chaps, v. and xi.) that 
the traditional " welfare " theory of pleasure and pain must be modified 
to apply to H prospective " experience ; pleasure and pain must be agents 
of accommodation, if they are to be available in organic development. 

223 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

The immediate locus of the hedonic element in most 
highly-toned psychoses is therefore sensory and central 
(i. e., not a matter of reaction or " resonance "), and can 
only be " kinesthetic " and motor in two cases : first 
when by endowment or habit the reaction has become 
reflex and the emotional storm bursts into conscious- 
ness with its organic associations by a return wave or 
" back stroke " (LI. Morgan) ; or when the original pleas- 
ure or pain was itself an index of a muscular or other 
motor condition or function. 

And we may go a step further and point out that even 
when the pleasure-pain element is thus reflex, an element 
in some sort of utility-reaction established by habit, it then 
nevertheless still plays the original role also, i. e., it be- 
comes the index of the relative advantage to the organism 
of that same utility-reaction in the newer conditions of 
life, and so tends to secure yet another secondary reac- 
tion. In this way while the pleasure-pain process 
may by constant association come to be part of a sensa- 
tion or a whole sensation with a nerve-apparatus of its 
own, it then also serves, as all other sensations do, 
to start its own motor expression in some such antithesis 
of out-and-in movements as that suggested independently 
and on different grounds by Munsterberg and by my- 
self. This latter reaction is then " toned " centrally, as 
the original utility-reaction was, and contributes a new 
hedonic element to consciousness. We thus have a 
certain genetic justification for the distinction between 
the " agreeableness " and " disagreeableness " of the 
higher life on the one hand, and the pleasure and 
"pain" of sensation on the other. 1 

Genetic conditions therefore — to sum up — require 

1 This point receives fuller notice in its proper theoretical position in 
the work Mental Development. 

224 



THE ORIGIN OF EMOTIONAL EXPRESSION 

that there should be three elements in all emotion : (1) 
an habitual and in the main inborn element, due to a 
"return wave" from various instinctive expressions; 
(2) a present " accommodation " element of pleasure 
and pain produced in consciousness by new sensory, 
intellectual, and ideal processes ; and (3) a " return 
wave " element from (2) and from muscular and or- 
ganic processes in vital connection or association with 
(1) and (2). 

The peripheral or " effect " theory recognizes the 
presence of (1), and (3) ; it does not account for the 
origin of (1), nor does it recognize (2). 

The necessity for some such genetic reconstruction 
of the doctrine . of emotion — to straighten out the 
tangled lines of fact — may be seen by the examination 
of a recent book in which many of the salient facts are 
stated with commendable clearness, but which in my 
view yet fails signally to unite them. 1 Mr. Marshall, 
by dubbing emotions instinct-feelings, goes so far — as 
James had also — to do justice to the fact of Habit in 
fixing emotional expression; but then he goes on to 
deny the adequacy of the effect theory of these instinct 
feelings. He seems to suppose that there is a mental 
accompaniment of marked quality attaching to every 
instinct apart from its return wave of expression. But 
a genetic view of Habit would have saved him this ; for 
everybody admits that the greater the fixity of habit the 
less the consciousness, and instinct is usually quoted as 
the best instance of this very truth. 

But Mr. Marshall excepts from the definition of emo- 
tion, purely on genetic grounds, two great classes of 
reactions which nevertheless have emotional accompani- 

1 Marshall, Pleasure, Pain, and JEsthetics. 
15 225 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

ments, i. e., imitative reactions, and what I may, with 
his approval, call " self -exhibiting " reactions. These 
are not adequately fixed in instinct combinations, be- 
cause their range of content and adaptation is too great 
to allow them to be shut down to definite channels. 
True again, and good, although I by no means accept 
this classification of such reactions. But as facts they 
illustrate the great genetic principle of accommodation ; 
and if Mr. Marshall could bring himself to take a 
more genetic view, he would see that all the reactions 
which are now instincts were once in exactly the same 
state, but have become consolidated in definite ways 
upon definite objects. It would then be clear that all 
emotion is, in its origin and process of making, largely 
a central phenomenon of pleasure and pain, but that all 
emotion in its development is becoming a peripheral and 
organic phenomenon of " resonance " or reaction, accord- 
ing as, by the law of Habit, consciousness falls away 
from the business of the centres and attaches more and 
more to the business of the periphery. 

So Mr. Marshall is then driven to a dualistic view of 
the affective life in its totality. He agrees with every 
one in making " pleasure-pain " and emotion both, as 
it were, thermometers (or why not algedometers? 1 ') of 
development, the indications in consciousness of some 
sort of good or ill fortune. But he is forced to find 
them to be different thermometers for registering the 
same scale of temperatures — to carry out an inadequate 
figure. He himself has brought the same objection to 
the " well-being " theory of pleasure as against pain, i. e., 
they should give two fines of development; 2 and then 

1 After analogy with Mr. Marshall's term " algedonics " suggested 
for the theory of pleasure and pain. 

2 A criticism which is wide of the mark, since all the evidence goes to 

226 



THE ORIGIN OF EMOTIONAL EXPRESSION 

commits the analogous genetic error as respects pleasure- 
pain in contrast with emotion. He says (p. 93 f.) : 
" The two sets of phenomena are allied in that both are 
primitive; in both cases we are able to trace their 
genesis back to the earliest developments of conscious- 
ness; both guide towards the advantageous and away 
from the disadvantageous." 

In arguing this dualism by an analysis of the devel- 
oped emotional consciousness, Mr. Marshall makes out 
his case again, I think, and adds one or two new and 
important aperpus, such as the difference between 
pleasure-pain-reactions and emotion-reactions, and such 
as the claim that pain expression can be inhibited with- 
out inhibiting the pain, while the same is not true of 
emotion. But when he says that " in both cases we are 
able to trace their genesis back to the earliest develop- 
ments of consciousness," it only remains to ask; why 
not do it then? That is just the task which thorough- 
going genetic undertakes, and which Mr. Marshall dis- 
misses in such words as these (p. 85): "The value of 
such argument, doubtful . . . even as far as we have 
gone, becomes more so the farther we proceed, be- 
cause of the uncertainty as to the history of our racial 
development." 

This dualism would require not only some such 
hypothesis as Spencer's "heightened nervous energy," 
to represent Bain's pleasure-pain factor, but also another 
kind of heightened nervous energy — for what else 
could it be? — to represent emotion. Is it not evi- 
dently better to say that one sort of heightened nervous 
energy does for both, and that the conscious difference 

show that pleasure and pain represent complementary organic processes. 
Meynert's reaching and withdrawing, etc. ; the plus and minus parts of 
the scale of the thermometer. 

227 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

is due to the different sensory elements which come in 
together with the pleasure-pain? In sense-states we 
have pleasure-pain — GefvMston — plus sense-quality 
(visual, auditory, etc.) ; in emotion-states we have 
pleasure -pain — Vorstellungston — plus sense-quality 
(muscular, organic, etc.). The difference, then, is one 
of developmental level. This seems to me to be fully 
covered by my hypothesis stated above that pleasure-pain 
represents the new accommodations, both at the beginning 
and at every stage of development, and that emotional 
expression represents the habits organized on the basis of 
the perception and recognition of objects. The possible 
dualism then is that between pleasure-pain and sensation. 

Postscript. — Professor James' remarkable clearing- 
up article on " The Physical Basis of Emotion " in The 
Psychological Review, Sept., 1894, calls for an additional 
word of comment. This paper of his practically settles 
the controversy over his theory, I think. It shows that 
we have all misunderstood his book and also, I may ven- 
ture to say that he is to blame for the misunderstanding. 
In my opinion, he now states a theory so different from 
that in his book that it is fair to add either that criticism 
has driven him out of his old position, or that what he 
has himself called " slap-dash " treatment — I call it 
above (written before his paper appeared) "naive" 
treatment — misled us all. At any rate, no one should 
now read, much less teach, his book without practically 
substituting this article for his chapter on " Emotion." 

In this new statement, Professor James claims three 
elements in emotion: (1) the direct reverberation or 
reaction element, a setback from muscles, organs, etc., 
in contrast to the incoming stimulus which brings about 
such reactions and in consequence of it. This element 

228 



THE ORIGIN OF EMOTIONAL EXPRESSION 

is so excessively emphasized in his book that most of his 
critics have supposed he meant this alone. But to refute 
all such he now, perfectly legitimately, I think, brings 
out the second factor in emotion, i. g., (2) the associated 
mass of content — ideas, etc. — which hangs together, 
however remotely, with the direct reverberation, and so 
secures all the power of association as an explaining 
agent. This he urges with great strength in this arti- 
cle, smiting most of his critics hip and thigh. This 
principle is fairly included by inference, I think, in his 
book — although so feebly and dimly that the blame is 
really his that so much good philosophical print has 
been spent in making the objections to him which he 
now fully and clearly sweeps away. I must add that I 
should not have supposed that he himself had thought 
out these associative extensions to his theory when he 
wrote the " Emotion " chapter ; for he must have seen 
that to present them would strengthen his book to an 
enormous degree. But granted the success of the 
" association " element which Worcester and others so 
plainly overlook, Professor James now brings in his 
third element in emotion, i. e., (3) all pleasure and pain 
tone in consciousness due to "incoming currents." 

Now to say that the G-efiilston of sensation, admitting 
that it is involved in the sensation process itself and is 
not due to a reaction or reverberation, " falls comfortably 
under my [his] theory " — this is to blow the frog of his 
original theory up big enough to rival the ox. Why ! 
who is there to oppose a theory which covers everything 
so " comfortably " ? I know of no one, unless it be 
some radical Herbartian who holds that central Hem- 
mungsprozessen can go on in the brain entirely apart 
from sensory conditions and " incoming currents." If 
Professor James has meant all along what he now says, 

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PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

then I for one have shown in what I have written in 
the foregoing pages about pleasures and pains of " ac- 
commodation," both sensory and intellectual, that I 
agree with him ; but it was with a very different under- 
standing of his views that these pages were written. 

That I am now right in saying that in his original 
chapter 1 he takes no account of any elements but those 
of resonance, muscular and organic, is shown by the fol- 
lowing quotations. Under the caption " Coarser Emo- 
tions " we read (Vol. II. p. 458) : " Each emotion is the 
resultant of a sum of elements, and each element is 
caused by a physiological process of a sort already well 
known. The elements are all organic changes, and each 
of them is the reflex effect of the exciting object" 
(italics mine). And under the caption " Subtler Emo- 
tions " (II. p. 471) : " In all cases of intellectual or moral 
rapture we find that unless there be coupled a reverber- 
ation of some kind with the mere thought of the object 
or cognition of its quality . . . our state of mind can 
hardly be called emotional at all. It is in fact a mere in- 
tellectual perception of how certain things are to be called. 
Such a judicial state of mind is to be classed among 
awarenesses of truth; it is a cognitive act " (italics his). 

Moreover, Professor James now sees that he agrees 
with his critics except on one point, which I think it is 
the main merit of the whole discussion to have brought 
to the front. He says : a " It may be after all that the 
difference between the theory and the views of its critics 
is insignificant." Why? Because — and the follow- 
ing passage shows that it is not James' theory which 
has become " orthodox," as he hopes, but James himself 
— " The only feelings which I myself cannot more or 

1 Principles of Psychology, vol. ii., chap. xxv. 

2 The Psychological Review, i. July, 1894, p. 524. 

230 



THE ORIGIN OF EMOTIONAL EXPRESSION 

less well localize in the body are very mild and, so to 
speak, platonic affairs. I allow them hypothetically to 
exist, however, in the form of the subtler emotions, and 
in the intrinsic agreeableness and disagreeableness of 
particular sensations, images, and thought-processes 
where no obvious organic excitement is aroused." It is 
true that he made such an admission in his book regard- 
ing " subtler emotions ; " but it seemed clearly contra- 
dicted by the context, and I was one of those associated 
with Lehmann and Irons who said that such an admis- 
sion would " give away " the whole theory. Nor do I 
think we were guilty of an ignoratio elenchi, as he now 
says, although we certainly should be, were we to repeat 
the charge now. 

The final point which James' article brings to a focus 
may be put in his words : " Must we admit, in the com- 
plex emotional state of mind, an element . . . distinct 
both from the intrinsic feeling-tone of the object and 
from that of the reactions aroused — an element of 
which the 'liking' and 'repugnance' mentioned above 
are the types, but for which other names may in other 
cases be found? " "Are these a third sort of affection, 
not due to afferent currents, and interpolated between 
feelings and reactions which are so due ? Or are they 
a name for what . . . resolves itself into more delicate 
reactions still? I incline to the latter view." 

I also incline to the latter view and have given, in 
my Mental, Development, some genetic reasons for so 
doing. I am therefore happy to say that I am now with 
Professor James all along the line, and I hope he may 
see in the genetic positions stated above some further 
grounds for his views. But we may still ask — those 
of us who now agree with him, for we are probably 
many — who has been converted to orthodoxy? 

231 



XI 

THE PERCEPTION" OF EXTERNAL REALITY 1 

Among the many interesting questions raised by recent 
discussions in Mind on the Cognition of Physical Real- 
ity is that of what I venture to call the " Coefficient " of 
external reality. By coefficient I mean the something 
which attaches to some presentations in virtue of which 
we attribute reality to them ; while others, not having 
the coefficient, are discredited. The diametrically op- 
posed solutions of this question of coefficient by Dr. 
Stout on one hand and, Dr. Pikler on the other is re- 
marked by the Editor 2 in his review of the latter in 
Mind, xv. p. 571. 

The opposite solutions which run through and color 
the history of opinion on this topic are as follows : to 
one class of writers, the coefficient of the reality of an 
image is its independence of the will (so Spencer, Stout, 
Robertson, and innumerable others) ; to another class, 
the coefficient is subjection to the will (so Bain, Pikler, 
etc.). And it is hard at first sight to see how such a 
flat contradiction can arise between such careful thinkers. 
My own reflection on the general psychology of belief 

1 From Mind, xvi. 1891, pp. 388 ff. The indications of this and the 
following paper are worked out in a volume on the Psychology of Logic 
shortly to appear under the title Judgment et Connaissance (and in English 
translation) in the Bibliotheque de Psychologie expei'imentale, edited by 
Dr. Toulouse. 

2 The late Professor G. Croom Robertson. 

232 



THE PERCEPTION OF EXTERNAL REALITY 

has led me to a point of view from which I am able to 
see the probable cause of this apparent difference of 
opinion. 

Suppose we make a distinction between a " memory " 
coefficient of reality and a " sensational " coefficient ; 
meaning by the latter the criterion of present sensational 
reality; and by the former, the something about a 
memory which leads us to believe that it represents a 
real experience (i.e., is not a mere creature of fancy). 
A moment's consideration will lead us to see that these 
two kinds of reality differ in their relation to the will. 
Certainly, a present sensible reality is not under control 
of my will ; it is independent, and if my coefficient is to 
be discovered in the relation of the presentation to my 
voluntary life, this must be its expression, and I go over 
to the class of writers who find the psychological basis 
of external reality in sensations of resistance. But when 
we come to inquire into the " memory " coefficient, — 
asking the question : what character is in a memory- 
image which testifies to its being a memory of reality ? — 
the tables seemed to be turned. Without stopping to 
examine other views, I hold that that image is a true 
memory which we are able to get again as a sensation by 
voluntarily repeating the series of muscular sensations 
which were associated with it in its first experience. In 
other words, if it does represent a real former experience, 
it must have with it muscular (resistance) associates 
which make it possible for me to change it into a sensa- 
tional experience again at my will. The memory-co- 
efficient, therefore, is subjection to will in the sense 
indicated. If this be true, the answer given to the main 
question of belief in objective reality will depend upon 
whether we look at it from the side of present reality or 
of reality as remembered. 

233 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

Further, this memory-coefficient of external reality 
must be carefully distinguished from the coefficient of 
memory itself ; the latter being the feeling that an image 
has been in consciousness before, i. e., the feeling of 
recognition, or of familiarity. I may recognize an image 
as a true memory, but yet not give it objective reality. 
The difference between recognition of memory-reality 
and the memory of external reality, is this : the former 
can be brought up by proper associates at will, but these 
associates and the resulting memory have not the sensa- 
tional coefficient after we get them : that is, they are not 
individually independent of the will. While, as is said 
above, the getting again of a remembered reality in the 
external world is by a series of sensational (resistance) 
associates, and the resulting experience when reached is 
a sensation independent of the will. In Hume's phrase, 
" an opinion or belief is a lively idea related to or asso- 
ciated with a present impression." A true memory, in 
short, is an image which I can get at will by a train of 
memory associates, and which, when got, is further sub- 
ject to my will ; a memory of external reality, on the 
contrary, is an image which I can get at will by a train 
of sensational associates and which, when got, is not 
subject to my will. Of the two, the former is important 
for the psychology of belief in general ; the latter only 
for the theory of belief in external objects. 

These three factors in belief appear clearly in this 
example: — An infant, after certain muscular move- 
ments, enjoys the contents of his food-bottle ; here is the 
sensational coefficient of external reality. Again, his 
bottle lies before him, he reproduces his enjoyment by 
voluntarily repeating the muscular series which before 
led up to the enjoyment; to do this he proceeds upon 
memory-coefficient of external reality. Being satisfied 

234 



THE PERCEPTION OF EXTERNAL REALITY 

and drowsy, the bottle-image comes up in his conscious- 
ness by association with the memories of the muscular 
movements, the real movements not being made nor the 
enjoyment reached; here is the coefficient of memory. 
Once more the bottle-image comes up, he makes the 
muscular movements, but fails to get the satisfaction; 
the memory-coefficient is not supported by the sensa- 
tional coefficient, — he is so far under illusion. 

As illustrating the two coefficients of external reality 
and their confusion, Dr. Pikler in Mind, No. xv. p. 396, 
brings against Dr. Stout's view that interruptions of 
regularity determine objective belief, the objection that 
such interruptions occur in the subjective order but are 
not — as interruptions and quite involuntary — part 
in the objective (sensational) order, overlooking the 
alternative that such images usually bring up associ- 
ates which throw them into the memory-order. And 
Dr. Stout seems quite right in saying that when there 
are no such associates they are put in the sensational 
order {Mind, No. xv. p. 549). In arguing that reality 
finds its criterion in subjection to the will, I think 
both Professor Bain and Dr. Pikler have in mind 
the memory-coefficient of reality — answering the ques- 
tion put by Mill: "What is the difference between 
thinking of a reality and representing to ourselves an 
imaginary picture ? " 

What could be clearer evidence that Professor Bain 
refers to the possibility of getting reality voluntarily 
than this quotation : " Our belief in the externality of 
the causes of our sensations means that certain actions 
of ours will bring the sensations into play or modify them 
in a known manner?" Dr. Stout quotes this and adds 
{Mind, No. xv. 33) : "I utterly fail to see how depend- 
ence on my own activity can mean the same as depend- 

235 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

ence on something other than myself;" which simply 
means that Dr. Stout " utterly fails " to see the dual 
bearing of the external-reality problem. 1 Professor Bain 
in this quotation is recognizing the memory-coefficient, 
and thus getting a basis for persistence in external 
objects; and I think he is not open to the charge of 
having entirely overlooked the sensational coefficient. 
What Dr. Stout calls Professor Bain's " obvious para- 
dox " is seen, from what I have already said, not to be 
a paradox, but a complexity in our belief in objective 
existence. 2 

In Mill there is almost exclusive appeal to the memory- 
coefficient, 3 and hence the confusion lurking in his 
definition of reality as " the permanent possibility of sen- 
sation." It is true, as Stout says, that a possibility is 
nothing until it is brought to the test of sensation ; but 
it is equally true, as Pikler says, that a possibility (of 
getting) sensation may carry belief without such a sen- 
sational test. In the former case, we ask for the sensa- 
tional coefficient to the exclusion of the other, and in 
the latter case we rest on memory to interpret the " pos- 
sibility " apart from present sensation. In short, Mill's 
formula may be modified to be true to either coefficient, 
but not to both ; while as it stands it is true to neither, 
but favors the memory construction. To express the 
sensational coefficient, it should read permanent neees- 

1 See the later exposition in Stout's Analytic Psychology, ii. p. 248, in 
which he admits the memory coefficient to a subordinate place. The 
present writer holds (1902) that the belief in the "persistence," as addi- 
tional to the "present existence," of the external world is due to this 
factor. 

2 For Professor Bain's clear recognition of both aspects, see Emotions 
and Will, 3rd ed., pp. 578-581. 

8 See especially pp. 234-238 of his Exam, of Hamilton (American edi- 
tion). The appeal becomes exclusive in Dr. Pikler's book, The Psychology 
of the Belief in Objective Existence. 

236 



THE PERCEPTION OF EXTERNAL REALITY 

sity 1 of certain sensations ; and to express the memory 
coefficient, it should read permanent possibility of getting 
for myself certain sensations. But for an adequate 
theory either aspect is insufficient, because it neglects 
the other. 

We might call the sensational coefficient (an object's 
independence of our will) the primary criterion of be- 
lief in external objects, and the memory-coefficient (the 
voluntary getting of sensations which resist) the secon- 
dary criterion. And an adequate formula, to do justice 
to both, would have to run somewhat thus : — Belief in 
external reality is a feeling of the necessary character of 
sensations of resistance, and of my ability to get again 
certain sensations of this kind at any time. 

I believe, however, that a simpler formula may be sug- 
gested : a formula which will hold that belief in general 
is a feeling attaching exclusively to objectives, its cri- 
terion or coefficient being lack of subjection to the will ; 
that belief in external reality is its very earliest exhibi- 
tion ; and that the belief of which subjection to the will 
is the criterion is a derived feeling anticipatory of sen- 
sational confirmation — just as the memory of which it 
is the accompaniment is derived and referable for its 
material to the sensational process. But my present 
object is only to make clear the issue, and to point out 
the waste of effort that results from failure to distinguish 
carefully the two points of view. Among recent writers 

1 The element of necessity (resistance) in certain sensations must be 
added to enable Mill to meet the ordinary common-sense argument that 
(in his words) " all mankind, unless they really believed in matter, would 
not have turned aside to save themselves from running against a post " 
(loc. cit. p. 244) ; for mankind do not turn aside except when the possibil- 
ity is of a certain kind of sensations. And he fails to meet the objection 
to his formula (really the same one) that it gives mankind no means of 
positively avoiding the post, i. e„ by voluntarily bringing about experience 
of other realities. 

237 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

I think no one else does such justice to both sides of the 
problem as does Lipps. 1 

1 Grundtatsachen des Seelenlebens, ch. xvii., particularly pp. 397 ff. 
The reader may now consult the article " Belief " in the Dictionary of 
Philosophy and Psychology, vol. i., 1901, by the present writer, which is 
initialed also by Stout ; citations of later important literature may also 
be found there. Stout's more recent formula, to the effect that belief 
arises under conditions of " limitation of activity," goes far to reconcile 
the opposed points of view. 



238 



XII 

FEELING, BELIEF, AND JUDGMENT 1 

In the review of my Handbook of Psychology, Feeling 
and Will, in the last number of Mind (N. S. No. 2, p. 
272), Miss Lowndes touches upon points of such import- 
ance that further discussion of them may be interesting, 
apart from my desire to be clearly understood. The 
nature of feeling in general, and the relation of belief to 
feeling and to judgment, are both problems of capital 
interest. First, briefly, what is feeling ? 

For what follows, let us understand by feeling simply 
sensibility ; the amount, intensity, agitation, of conscious- 
ness. It is consciousness itself, a " first intention " — 
consciousness in its simplest expression, but conscious- 
ness as present, also, in the highest operations of knowing 
and willing. The mollusk — and perhaps the sensitive 
plant — does not know anything, nor will anything, but 
feels. 2 As a matter of fact, we find that we feel dif- 
ferently during the predominance of different functions. 

1 From Mind, July 1, 1892, pp. 403 ff. 

2 This conception is clear enough, it seems to me, especially when 
viewed from the biological side. Yet Miss Lowndes construes me as 
limiting Feeling to egoistic Emotion (loc. cit., p. 274). In saying that 
Feeling has "reference to self" (Handbook, i. 36), I do not mean, of 
course, the presentation of self ; but simply the conscious area, the inner 
aspect, belonging to my organism. In the very same sentence, I say, 
"states of feeling may entirely lack any presentation or knowledge ele- 
ment." Miss Lowndes' criticisms rest, for the most part, on evident 
misapprehensions such as this. 

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PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

When I am striving and straining, my state of feeling 
is very different from my state when I am listening 
passively to an uninteresting lecture; and both states 
differ greatly from such an emotion as anger. Now the 
second question which I wish to ask is this : how do we 
feel when we believe ? — when an article of faith is just 
becoming an article of faith? 

As to the general theory of belief, I may refer the 
reader to the book which is now under discussion. 
What I wish to point out here is that after the elements 
brought out by analysis have been assigned to their proper 
categories (impulse, volition, presentation, etc.), what is 
ultimately left over is a f eeling-f actor. There is impulse 
in belief : all things believed belong to certain categories, 
have certain coefficients, toward which we feel impulses 
which are, for consciousness at least, original and after 
which we strive. There is likewise presentation or 
representation, usually both, in belief : for we believe a 
content, an objective. But impulses, representations, 
and volitions might be present to eternity without belief. 
Note the vegetative biological satisfactions of the new- 
born, our voluntary performances of organic functions, 
and, in a higher sphere, the objects of our ethical and 
aesthetic gratifications, which remain largely a matter 
of uncritical and unreflective presence — what I call 
" reality-feeling." We stumble upon the beautiful and 
good, and they please us; but their presence, and our 
gratification from their presence, do not afford us any 
clear criterion or coefficient by which we may accept 
them as beautiful and good. 

Now admitting that the acceptance, endorsement, rati- 
fication, of an objective is necessary to constitute Belief, 
shall we call it Judgment with Brentano, and on the 
strength of its priority, make Judgment an irreducible 

240 



FEELING, BELIEF, AND JUDGMENT 

function co-ordinate with Presentation ( Yorstellen) and 
Feeling ; or shall we attempt to analyze it further ? 

The need of analysis is seen in the conflicting views 
of judgment, logical and psychological, now current. The 
current divergence of view is shown by the comparison 
of Erdmann's Logik, and Hillebrand's Die neuern 
Theorien der kategorischen Schlusse. Hillebrand accepts 
Brentano's view of judgment and develops it in its logi- 
cal bearings. This view seems to be psychological in 
two of its factors : (1) It emphasizes an aspect of exis- 
tential judgments which is not covered by the ordinary 
predicative theory ; namely, if existence is a predicate in 
the ordinary attributal sense, it must have a notional 
content of its own — it must be itself a content, an 
earlier presentative experience — an error which Kant 
refuted once for all in his criticisms of the ontological 
proof for the existence of God. But the formal logi- 
cians (e. g., Erdmann), reply: if existence is not a pre- 
dicate, the distinction between presentation and judgment 
is subverted. This last is unanswerable, but it leaves 
unrelieved the acute strain between the psychological 
and logical views of the existential, pointed out by 
Brentano. (2) The Brentano-Hillebrand view does jus- 
tice for the first time to the " unitary " or " conceptual " 
meaning of judgment and syllogism ; a point of view from 
which the formal strictly predicative or " two-member ed " 
doctrine of judgment appears at a great disadvantage. 
When I say " the dog is fierce," my content is a single 
object, fierce dog — this much certainly, whether or no 
we go over to the existential view which says, " the 
fierce dog is " is equivalent to the original statement 
(of. the writer's Handb. of Psychol., I., pp. 285, 301). 
Indeed, Brentano seems to go over to the existential 
view, thus saving himself from the criticisms to which 
16 241 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

his doctrine is open, at the same time that he cuts him- 
self off from a predicative theory by his unitary view of 
the judgmental content. 

. Yet it is curious to note how the logical progressus 
of doctrine may be reversed. Erdmann holds the pre- 
dicative theory, yet maintains the unitary view properly 
belonging to the existential theory. This he does by 
upholding what may be called the " declarative," as op- 
posed to the synthetic function of judgment (Logik, L, pp. 
205, 261). For this, there is much to be said. The 
present writer has remarked (ibid., pp. 283, 285) : " The 
essential feature of judgment is this, that it sets forth, 
in a conscious, contemplative way, the actual stage of the 
thought movement." Erdmann holds (loc. cit., I., p. 
262) " that it is always expressed in a proposition." But 
how easy it would be to reverse this chain of argument, 
and to sav that because there is this declaration of relation- 
ship between parts of the objective whole which is the con- 
tent of judgment, there must have been originally more 
than one content, and that, therefore, judgment, as a syn- 
thetic thing, precedes presentation and renders it possible. 

The view of judgment which is desiderated, therefore, 
should have the following features : first, it should find 
some way of holding that existence is a true predicate 
and yet not an attributal content ; second, that the con- 
tent of judgment is a single concept ; third, that refer- 
ence to existence accompanies all judgment ; and fourth, 
that judgment is declarative of results already reached 
in conception. The first and third of these four points 
are essential, if the existential and predicative theories of 
judgment are to find any common ground. 

On the first point — the nature of the existence predi- 
cate — consciousness seems to throw fight. Keality is at 
first simply presence, sensation, presentation; we have here 

242 



FEELING, BELIEF, AND JUDGMENT 

that fundamental phase of affective consciousness, reality- 
feeling. There is no judgment at all, because there is 
no occasion for assertion. There is no acceptance of 
reality as such, because there is no category into which 
to put it. But now let experience come in like a flood, 
let pleasures of gratification be succeeded by pains of 
want, let impulse seek its end, finding it here and losing 
it there; and amid the contradictions and reiterations, 
the storm and stress of the accommodation of life to 
the world, a few great relief -points begin to stand out 
in consciousness. They recur, they satisfy, they hold 
together, they can be found when wanted. They are 
not new as objects of apprehension ; they are the same 
objectives as before. But somehow, after we have grati- 
fied our appetites by them, and have sought and found 
them, again and again, holding firm together, while 
other objectives have shifted, faded, and disappeared — 
then the mental part of us which envelops them becomes 
different. Our affective consciousness now assumes the 
coloring which we call belief ; that sense of acceptance, 
assurance, and confirmation which succeeds doubt and 
perplexity. This is feeling ; a feeling of the methodical 
way in which certain objectives manoeuvre in contrast 
with the unmethodical way in which other objectives 
manoeuvre, — the feeling of a reality-coefficient. 

This, then, is the primary meaning of belief in reality 
or existence. It is the sense of the confirmed presence of 
an objective, as satisf} T ing the demands of conscious life. 
But so far, belief is not judgment, and existence is not 
an idea. But so soon as such an objective is labelled as 
real, is pictured with this coefficient, then the declarative, 
assertive phase of consciousness arises, and the " S is " 
is born — a true predicative judgment. What was before 
the feeling-envelope, so to speak, of the presentation, is 

243 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

now itself presented as part of the content. Hillebrand 
seems to be right in saying that the idea of existence 
does not arise before, but in and through, the existential 
judgment. 

In the predicate of the existential, therefore, what we 
assert is not content over and above the subject S, but 
the feeling-category in which the S-content is enveloped 
in consciousness : the way consciousness feels in conse- 
quence of the presence of this particular content in it. 
This is, in the writer's view, the true explanation of the 
existential. It is a judgment, because in its declarative 
function it renders in intelligible form the endorsement 
which distinguishes belief from simple presentation. 
But the predicate is only a sign of this endorsement, not 
an added objective element. 

The other desideratum of the theory is now clearly in 
sight, i. e., the presence of an existence-value always in 
judgment. As experience broadens, our reality-coeffici- 
ents are so well established as categories of feeling- 
consciousness, that each presented content has its 
familiar envelope of belief, its endorsement in kind — so 
familiar and natural that it is not formally asserted at 
all. And the new marks which accrue to a content in 
conception come to be declared in the ordinary " two- 
membered " form of judgment, all inside of a tacit (felt) 
reality-coefficient. The is of " the man is white "is, 
therefore, very different from the is of " there is a white 
man." The former is merely the sign of conceptual 
synthesis : the judgment might be true in any " world 
of reality," e. g., of Adam Bede. The existence-value 
of the judgment is simply the environment of feeling 
which an accepted proposition carries, with no indication 
of any particular kind of existence. But in the true 
existential — " there is a white man " — the feeling factor 

244 



FEELING, BELIEF, AND JUDGMENT 

is taken up as a quasi-logical predicate, and the coefficient 
of external reality is declared. The is now expresses 
the conscious ratification and declaration of belief. 

The employment of the belief criterion as a norm of 
classification of judgments 1 is fruitful in further con- 
firmation of this general result. If we look at the belief- 
attitude of the mind in cases of assertion, we find two 
clear truths not brought out by the ordinary division of 
the logics. First, the disjunctive judgment is seen to be 
a categorical form of expression. The disjunctive form 
of the predicate, " P or P'," means that the same belief- 
feeling accompanies either of two or more declarations 
concerning the subject S. It expresses the belief-value 
of the concept S as far as constructive experience of it 
(i. e., the evidence) is found to be of value. With more 
evidence, the parity of P and P', as claimants upon 
belief, disappears, and the judgment takes the regular 
categorical form. Second, the hypothetical judgment 
lies, with reference to belief, midway between the ordi- 
nary categorical and the existential. We may approach 
it from either extreme. For example, the judgment " if 
a is b, c is c?," means that the same degree of reality, or 
belief-feeling, accompanies the conceptual synthesis ab> 
on the one hand, and the synthesis cd, on the other hand. 
But it does not determine the particular coefficient of 
reality belonging to either ab or cd. Or we may approach 
the hypothetical from the side of the existential, getting 
the hypothetical judgment of existence, " if ab exists so 
does cd." In this case, not only does the belief-feeling 
envelop both ab and cd, as before ; but, further, the par- 
ticular coefficient of reality attaching in common to them 
both is now expressed. This last form of judgment is, 
therefore, from our present point of view, the richest 

1 See Venn, Emper. Logic, 243 ; Baldwin, Handb. of Psychol, led., i. 293. 

245 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

and most notable. In it we catch both belief as felt co- 
efficient, and existence as asserted predicate (*. e., the 
reality-coefficient made the P of predication). 

The above account, it will be seen, suggests an ex- 
planation also to the negative existential judgment — a 
point of great difficulty to Herbart, Brentano, and Hille- 
brand — by saving the predicative force of the existence- 
sign. Yet by the negation in this judgment, as now 
explained, no element of content is cut off from S ; what 
is denied is belief in a positive coefficient of reality ; or as 
Erdmann 1 and Sigwart say, it is the rejection of an 
attempted positive judgment of existence. 

The element of belief which accompanies all judgment, 
described above as felt recognition of a reality-coefficient, 
gives us the line of separation between formal and 
material logic. The judgments A, E, I, O, cannot be 
purely formal, nor can the syllogisms constructed from 
them ; for every S and P in each one of them has its 
belief-value — its reality-coefficient — and every actual 
case of inference means the development of concept sub- 
jects to the limitations of thought in that particular 
sphere of reality. This reference to reality is probably 
what Hillebrand is contending for in his doctrine of 
" Double Judgments," so far as I understand it. The 
truth of every conclusion rests upon the presupposition 
from the supplying of which the hypothetical syllogism 
arises, just as the hypothetical judgment arises from the 
supplying of the ground of Belief in the categorical 
judgment that the two premises have the same kind of 
reality. The syllogism : — 

A is B 
B is C 
A is C, 

1 Loc. cit. i. 349 ff. 
246 



FEELING, BELIEF, AND JUDGMENT 

to be valid, really requires belief that the proposition, If 
A is B and B is C, then A is C, applies to the particular 
elements of content in question. Without this presup- 
position, securing the same coefficient to both premises, 
the conclusion would be false ; as, for example : — 

All men who have died will rise again, 

The man Borneo died, 

The man Borneo will rise again. 

The " man Romeo " and the " all men " have different 
coefficients of reality — different material reference, as 
is indicated by the difference of type — and the conclu- 
sion is invalid. 



247 



XIII 

I. Memoey foe Square Size 1 

The experiments of this study were performed at To- 
ronto (by the present writer with Mr. W. J. Shaw), 
during the winter of 1892-3. The object was to deter- 
mine the accuracy of the memory for size, as affected by 
the lapse of time. A figure of two dimensions was 
selected for experiment because of the tendency to meas- 
ure linear size in terms of well-known units of length. 
Circles tend to be measured by their radii, but in the 
case of the square, the impression is that of the area, 
and the natural memory-image is not so liable to be 
corrected by comparison with standards fixed in mind 
by repeated experience. 

The experiments proceeded by three different methods. 
(1) Selection from a Variety. A single figure (the nor- 
mal, 150 mm. square) was drawn on a blackboard and 
shown to a large college class ; after a certain time a 
number of squares of various sizes were shown simul- 
taneously, and the class was requested to designate the 
one that appeared to be the same size as the normal. 
The squares ranged from 130 to 210 mm. by intervals of 
20 mm., and the time intervals were 10, 20, and 40 min- 
utes. The class consisted of about 225 persons, of 

1 Prom The Psychological Review, May, 1 895. Reported by Professor 
H. C. Warren to the American Psychological Association, December, 1893. 
(Cf. the Abstract in the Proc. Amer. Psych. Ass., 2nd Meeting, 1893.) 

248 



MEMORY FOR SQUARE SIZE 

whom some 50 were women. (2) Identification. Here 
the normal square was first shown, and afterwards one 
other square; the subjects were asked to say whether 
the latter appeared to be greater, equal to, or less than 
the normal. The time intervals were the same as before, 
and the second square was in every instance 20 mm. 
greater than the normal. 

Both series were treated by the " method of right and 
wrong cases," and the two results showed remarkable 
agreement. The percentage of right cases is shown in 
Table I. 

Table I 





I. By Selection. 


II. By Identification. 


10 min. . . 


64.1 


87.6 


20 » 


59.3 


82.7 


40 " 


36.4 


58.5 



Plotting the results (Fig. 1), we find the memory 
curves, as they may be called, practically parallel, but 
the degree of accuracy is much higher by the second 
method than by the first. In each there is a rapid fall- 
ing off: at first, then a period of gradual descent, and 
finally another rapid drop. The greater accuracy of the 
results in II is partly due to the manner of stating the 
question. Should the memory-image of the normal 
square either remain unaltered, or decrease in size, the 
subject would respond correctly that the second square 
was the greater, and he would respond incorrectly only 
if his memory-image had increased sensibly in size from 
its original. Whereas, in the series by Selection his 

249 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 



responses would be classed as incorrect if his memory- 
image had either increased or decreased sensibly. A 
further source of error in the series by Selection was the 
disturbance due to simultaneous contrast between the 
figures. Some special experiments were afterwards 
made to determine the effect of this contrast (see II, 
below). 

In discussing the form of the two memory-curves so 
reached, it should first be observed that their real origin 
is not at A, but at a point, or points, near B. For the 




Curves for the methods of Selection (I) and Identification (II). Verti- 
cal lines give percentage of correct cases. Horizontal divisions give 
time intervals in minutes. 

difference of 20 mm. is very much greater than the least 
perceptible difference between two squares observed in 
immediate succession; hence, even if a considerable 
interval should elapse before the second square is shown, 
no incorrect judgment will be given. The effect of this 
is to make the first falling off, when once it begins, even 
more rapid than is indicated in the diagram, and possibly 
also to carry out the parallelism between the two curves 
still further. The reason for the sudden falling off may 
lie in the conditions of the experiments. The subjects 
began to take notes on a lecture immediately after the 
normal square was shown, and there was consequently a 

250 



MEMORY FOR SQUARE SIZE 

sudden withdrawal of attention from the memory- 
image, allowing it to decrease greatly in distinctness at 
once. After this first influence had taken effect, there 
was, it seems, but little change until the ordinary factors 
which tend to make the image more vague began to take 
effect. The work of these factors, which one would 
scarcely expect to become apparent within 40 minutes, 
may have been hastened by the fatigue arising from 
steady application. 1 

(3) The third series proceeded by what was termed 
the Method of Reproduction. A normal square having 
been shown, as before, the subjects were asked, after 
the stated interval, to draw on paper a square of the same 
size. The normal in this case was 170 mm. square. 
The reproductions were almost always too small, their 
average being 146.0 after 20 minutes and 146.4 
after 40 minutes. This result was rather unex- 
pected, as the other series had indicated a tendency 
of the memory-image to increase in size beyond the 
original. It may be attributed to two factors: (1) 
The muscles of the hand were fatigued from continuous 
writing, and this tended to give the impression of a 
figure larger than that actually drawn. (2) The paper 
on which the drawing was made was not much larger than 
the actual size of the normal; any figure coming close to 
the edges would appear very large, since it occupied so 
large a portion of the field. Hence there was a tendency 
to draw the square too small. On this account it was 
decided to separate the results obtained by this method 
from the others, in which the conditions were more 
nearly alike. 

1 The results were examined for a possible difference between the 
two sexes, but the variations were neither marked nor constant in 
direction. 

251 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 



II. Further Experiments on Memory for 
Square Size 1 

The experiments were taken up at this point by 
Messrs. Warren and Shaw, at Princeton. A possible 
objection to the Selection Method lay, as has been said, 
in the disturbing influence of simultaneous contrast. To 
investigate this, the following experiment was performed : 
Ten squares, ranging between 100 and 190 mm., were 
drawn in promiscuous order on a large sheet of paper ; 
on another sheet of the same size a single square was 
drawn as normal, and the two sheets were placed in 
different rooms. The subjects observed the normal first, 
and going at once to the other room designated the 
square which appeared equal to it. The normal used 
was 120 mm. in one instance and 170 mm. in another. 
In each case there was a marked attraction towards the 
centre of the series, the average for the normal of 120 
mm. being 123.3, and for that of 170 mm., 165. 

On this account it seemed desirable to supplement the 
Toronto experiments by others, and to employ a some- 
what different method, using a series which combined 
the advantages of Selection and Identification. The 
object was to determine the threshold, i. e., the (average) 
least perceptible difference from the normal after a given 
period of time. In each experiment the normal was 
first shown, and after the interval another square as 
near the threshold as the latter could be determined 
from the previous experiments; the experiments were 
continued until the threshold was found. When the 
squares were shown in immediate succession (interval of 

1 This section is by Professor H. C. Warren and Mr. W. J. Shaw. 

252 



MEMORY FOR SQUARE SIZE 

no minutes = perception), the threshold was found to be 
3 mm. for squares of about 150 mm. When the interval 
was increased it was found to make an essential difference 
whether the second square was the larger or the smaller. 
For an interval of 10 minutes the threshold was 8 mm. if 
the second was smaller, while it was but 5 mm. if the 
second was larger ; for 20 minutes it was somewhat less 
than 8 mm. if the second was smaller, and less than zero 
(a minus quantity!) if the second was larger; that is, 
when two squares of the same size were shown, 20 min- 
utes apart, the second was pronounced the smaller by over 
50 per cent of the subjects (actually, 63 per cent). 

That this result was not accidental (the conditions 
rendered any collusion impossible) was proved by the 
substantial agreement of all the experiments, pointing 
as they did without exception in the same direction. 
The entire series (marked a in Table II) was performed 
on the same objects, a college class of about 50, Juniors 
and Seniors, on nine separate occasions, the 10-minute 
intervals being taken first. Besides this the table shows 
two experiments (marked b) on two other college classes 
of 50 and 65 respectively, where squares of 150 and 160 
mm. were used, with a 20-minute interval, the normal 
being smaller in the former case and larger in the latter. 
The lack of practice makes the threshold much greater 
in these instances than in the others, but they exhibit 
a similar difference, depending on the order of sequence. 
The line of values marked c shows the experiments on 
squares immediately succeeding one another (0 minutes 
interval), taken with still another set of subjects, and 
the two values marked d are taken from the earlier 
experiments by Identification. 

These results unite to show that besides the growth 
of inaccuracy, or indistinctness, in the memory-image, 

253 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

there is another factor at work, by which the memory- 
image tends to grow larger as the time interval increases. 
The table gives three cases which allow direct compari- 
son between an increasing and a decreasing sequence: 
(1) With unpractised observers (see b), 10 mm. increase 

Table II 



Interval 


Difference between I (normal) and II. 


and 
order. 


20mm. 


12mm. 


10mm. 


8 mm. 


5 mm. 


3 mm. 


o mm. 


omin, 
II<or>I 


— 


— 


95(c) 


87(c) 


63(c) 


4 mm.=: 59 
2 mm.= 44 

00 


85= 
(c) 


10 min. . 


— 


— 


— 


— 


50(a) 


— 


f- 
1 

< 

U 


10 min. . 
II>I . . 


87(d) 


— 


70(a) 


53 (a) 


— 


— 


20 min. . 
IKI . . 


— 


— 


75(b) 


94 (a) 


75(a) 


65 (a) 


(63< 

J 94 — 


20 min. . 
II>I . . 


82(d) 


82(a) 


37(b) 


67(a) 


— 


— 


(13> 
(a) 



The figures denote percentage of right answers, except under 
mm., where they denote the judgment (=,>, or <,) actually- 
made. The normal was 150 mm. square. 



from the normal was noted by only 37% after 20 minutes, 
while the same amount of decrease was noted by 75%. 
(2) With practised observers (a), 8 mm. increase was 
noted by 67%, and the same decrease by 49%. (3) With 
the same observers as (2), the final test, after consider- 
able practice, was with two equal squares, separated by 

254 



MEMORY FOR SQUARE SIZE 

20 minutes interval ; 63% pronounced the second square 
smaller, 24% equal, and 13% larger. Comparing this 
with the observations on the threshold for perception, 
we see that while half of the subjects can distinguish a 
difference in the latter case only when it amounts to 
3 mm., in case of a 20-minute interval a majority actually 
think they perceive a difference when none exists, indi- 
cating plainly that their memory-image has grown by 
more than 3 mm., apart from any increase in the extent 
of the territory lying " below the threshold.' ' 

These results are not so satisfactory as the earlier 
series (see Table I) for determining the actual law of 
the threshold, on account of the increased degree of 
practice as the experiments proceeded. But they bring 
out clearly this fact of the growth, or exaggeration, of 
the memory-image. 

The close of the college year prevented an extension 
of these experiments to intervals of 40 minutes with the 
same set of men. 

A word or two may be in place here regarding the 
relation between single experiments on a number of 
subjects and a series of experiments on a single indi- 
vidual. In any experiments where a number of results 
are combined and their averages taken, what is sought 
is a representative value. By multiplying the trials, 
accidental influences are eliminated and we obtain a 
value representative of the given individual under the 
given conditions. If the individual represents some 
peculiar type, we should further compare his results 
with those obtained from individuals of other types. If, 
however, what we desire is the observation of an average 
individual, we must make sure that our object is such, 
by comparing him with others. Rather than repeat the 
entire series on several individuals, we may save time 

255 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

and labor by performing a single experiment on a 
number together. There are then a number of precau- 
tions to be taken. (1) Each subject must understand 
perfectly the nature of the judgment to be made. (2) 
The judgments must be entirely independent. (3) The 
subjects must be representative — not drawn from some 
one peculiar class ; and they must be governed by sen- 
sibly the same conditions. (4) Finally, care must be 
taken with the objective conditions of the experiment, 
so that no vitiating circumstances shall creep in. — In 
the present instance, every precaution was taken to 
fulfil the first two and the last of these requirements, 
and, a number of doubtful results having been rejected, 
the remainder fulfilled the conditions exactly, so far as 
a most careful scrutiny and attention on the part of the 
two observers could determine. Further, the subjects 
were acted upon by sensibly the same conditions during 
the given interval/ There is, of course, room for variety 
of opinion as to how far representative a college class is 
to be considered, and what allowances, if any, should be 
made for differences in previous occupation and differ- 
ences in location with reference to the platform where 
the squares were shown. The writers are inclined to 
minimize these differences, and as to the former ques- 
tion, it is urged that a body of men like those under 
consideration are representative of the average educated 
male of twenty-one years. We believe the results to 
be far more satisfactory than a quantity of experiments 
on merely one or two individuals, and think that this 
cumulative method, under which alone are possible cer- 
tain experiments involving a great amount of time, 
may safely be used in connection with the more usual 
procedure. 

256 



XIV 

THE EFFECT OF SIZE-CONTRAST UPON JUDGMENTS 
OF POSITION IN THE RETINAL FIELD 1 

I. Problem, Apparatus, and Methods. — The indi- 
cation given in the preceding paper that the arrange- 
ment of squares of various sizes in the visual field has 
an influence upon the identification of one of them as of 
a certain remembered size, suggested a farther research. 
It occurred to the writer that any influence of contigu- 
ous squares upon each other would be accurately 
measured by their joint influence upon the subject's 
estimate of some other distance in the visual field. 
Such a distance as that lying between the squares lends 
itself directly to this purpose. 

An arrangement was readily effected, whereby the 
ratio of the sides of two squares to each other was 
varied in a series of values, while the distance between 
the squares was kept constant. Any regular variations 
then in the judgment of this latter distance, such as that 
of its mid-point, — i. e., the bisection of the distance 
between the squares, — would be due to the variations 
in the ratio of the square-sizes. Such a problem shows 
practical bearings also in all matters which require esti- 
mates of balance, division, proportion in right lines 
between masses, objects, etc., in the field of vision : such 
matters as the hanging of pictures, designing of cuts, 
vignettes, architectural plans, etc., involving fine values. 

1 From The Psychological Review, May, 1895. 
17 257 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

Of course all variations from the correct location of a 
mid-point, or other critical point, lying between two 
masses of material, color, etc., should be allowed for in 
applying the formulae of aesthetic effect. 

A further complication also arises when movement 
enters into the case: the movement of the contrasted 
masses toward or from each other, of the eye from one 
to the other along the line of connection, or of the 
element of this line whose evolution describes the line. 




Fig. I. 

Experimental Arrangements. — The following descrip- 
tion (with Fig. 1) of my device for investigating the 
problem is given in some detail, since it meets the 
essential requirements of such experimentation and is so 
simple in principle that it may be adopted by others who 
desire to carry this kind of experimentation further. 

The dark room (R) communicates with room I (R') 
by a single window (W) which is completely filled with 

258 



SIZE-CONTRAST 

white cardboard. In this cardboard two square holes 
are cut (S and S 1 ) whose sides are of determined ratio to 
each other, and whose distance from each other is 
measured by a slit bearing a known ratio in length to 
the side of the larger square. On the wall beside the 
window (at Ax) is fixed the axis of movement of a long 
needle which is moved upon this axis by a pin carried 
round the face of the clock motor (Cm) of a Rothe poly- 
graph. The movement of one end of the needle upward 
by the pin and downward by its own weight, is reversed 
by the other end of the needle, which so carries an 
arrow-head or pointed marker up and down the mm. 
scale marked upon the slit. The needle bears at A the 
armature of an electromagnet. The magnet (E) under 
the armature is fixed to the cardboard and its connec- 
tions are carried into room R/ and terminate in a punch- 
key (K) on a table directly in front of the window 
W. The reagent sits at this key, and closes the current 
when the needle reaches the mid-point of the slit ; the 
needle is arrested by the attraction of the magnet (E), 
and the reading is given on the scale rara. The appar- 
atus works automatically, giving a series of experiments, 
with alternating up and down movement of the needle, 
until the motor runs down. A gas jet in room R is 
focussed through a large reading lens upon the scale 
rara., converting the small point of the needle seen by the 
reagent from the other room, into a moving bead of light ; 
the background of the squares and of the slit is the 
black of the dark-room wall, and the whole is seen by 
him upon the white surface of the cardboard. 

For the horizontal arrangement of the squares, the 
whole apparatus is simply shifted 90°, bringing the axis 
of movement of the needle below the window. 

With the arrangements thus described experiments 

259 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

were carried out on two persons ; Sh., (W. J. Shaw) and 

T. (G. A. Tawney), with results as given in this report. 

Both were practised in psychological experimentation, 

but Sh. more than T. 

S 1 
In the case of each, the series of values of the ratio ^~ 

was ^-, J-, \, Jg, which gives, when S has the constant 
value of 20 cm., the following series of values for S 1 , i. e.> 
10, 5, 2.50, 1.25 cm. A constant value for the distance 
between the squares was selected which seemed about as 
likely to occur in ordinary arrangements and experiments 
as any other, i. <?., -|- S = 10 cm. 

The experiments were performed in series of 20 to 25, 
called each a " lot," only one lot being taken at a sitting to 
avoid fatigue of the eyes. The time of day was kept con- 
stant, the subject was kept in entire ignorance of the object 
of the research and of the results he gave, and was asked 
after each series to give any impressions he might have 
of the accuracy of his results, and of the variations which 
he made, if any, in his method of identifying the mid- 
point. Careful record was kept of all these impressions, 
and they turned out to be valuable. 

Methods of Identifying the Mid-point. — The two 
reagents began at the very begimiing of the experiments 
to describe their procedure differently — a difference 
which was persisted in and became in the sequel a matter 
of fundamental importance. Sh, tended to fix his gaze 
upon the moving bead of light ; followed it in its course, 
and stopped it when it reached the mid-point. This, it 
is evident, involves an element of eye-movement through 
a series of positions corresponding in extent directly to 
half the line. This I shall call the " approach method " — 
seeing that the mid-point is selected only as it is ap- 
proached by the light-bead. 

260 



SIZE-CONTRAST 

T., on the other hand, tended to select the mid-point 
first ; and endeavored to hold it fixed until the light-bead 
reached it, then stopping the bead by his reaction. This 
evidently gives a result largely independent of eye- 
movements on the line, and this may accordingly be 
called the " fixation method. It will be seen below 
that certain consequences follow from this difference 
of method. 

7. Approach Method. Vertical Arrangement. Results 
of Sh. — The result of 770 experiments with the vertical 
arrangement upon Sh., who used the " approach " 
method, divided into 5 series of 6 lots each, are shown 
in Table I. In the " vertical arrangement " the larger 
square was above the smaller in all cases. The variable 
error is not given in any of the tables, since it fell below 
the limit of accuracy of the apparatus, i. <?., the diameter 
of the light-bead. The uniformity in direction of the 
constant error is shown in the small number of exceptions 
or minus judgments given in the column " Excpts." in 
the table. The words " down," " up," " both," signify 
the direction of movement of the needle. 

Table I. — Sh. App. Method. Ver. Arrgt. 



No. 


Ratio of Sides 
in cm. 


Mean Var. in mm. 




Exps. 


Both Directions. 


Down. 


Up. 




155 


20:10 


2.35 


2.7 


2. 


6 


150 


20:5 


3.6 


3.95 


3.2 


2 


150 


20:2.50 


3.89 


4.27 


3.52 





150 


20:1.25 


4.4 


5. 


3.8 





165 


20:0 


2.8 


2.93 


2.66 


1 



The consideration of the figures given in this table 
enables us to formulate the following statements for the 

261 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

case in which the eye follows the stimulating bead to its 
point of arrest, up and down a vertical line : 

1. There is a tendency to fix the mid-point too far 
away from the larger square (positive values of mean 
var.). 

2. The direction of the tendency to error has practi- 
cally no exceptions. 

3. This tendency varies in some direct ratio with the 
ratio of the sides of the two squares to each other ; i. e., 
from .01215 of the side of the larger square when its 
ratio to the side of the smaller is 2 : 1, to .02 of the 
side of the larger when its ratio to the smaller is 16 : 1. 

4. At the limiting value (0) of the side of the 
smaller square, the tendency to locate the mid-point 
too far away from the larger square is about the same 
as when the sides of the two squares are in the ratio 2:1. 

5. The tendency to error is from 16 to 25 per cent 
stronger when the stimulating object whose location is 
fixated is in movement in the same direction as the 
tendency of error (down), than when it is in movement 
in the opposite direction (up). 

Table II.— Sh. App. Method. Hor. Arrgt. 







Mean Var. in 


mm. 


t» 


No. 


Ratio of Sides 
in cm. 






P* 


Exps. 


Both Directions. 


Right. 


Left. 




100 


20:5 


.9 


1.95 


.33 


20 


50 


20:2.5 


1.67 


2.5 


.7 


4 


50 


20:1.25 


2.73 


3. 


2.46 


2 


50 


20:0 


2.1 


£ 


2.2 


3 



II Results of Sh. Horizontal Arrangement. — Passing 
now to the horizontal arrangement, in which the details 

262 



SIZE-CONTRAST 

of apparatus remained the same as for the vertical, I 
may report as before for the two methods. The larger 
square was placed to the left, the smaller to the right, 
and the bead of light moved right and left over the slit 
between. The variations in the side of the smaller 
square gave as before the series of ratios to the side of 
the larger, 1 J, \, x \. 

From the examination of Table II we gather the 
following results: 

1. There is a practically uniform tendency of error 
away from the larger square. 

2. This tendency varies in some direct ratio with the 
ratio of the sides of the two squares to each other. 

3. The magnitude of the error is from .9 to 2.2 mm., 
i. e. 9 .005 to .01 of the side of the larger square. 

4. At the limiting value (0) of the side of the small 
square the tendency is slightly less than when the ratio 
of the two sides is 16 : 1. 

5. This tendency is about ^ greater when the . move- 
ment of the stimulus fixated is in the direction of the 
error itself (right) than when it is in the opposite 
direction (left). 

Table III. — T. Fix. Method. Ver. Arrgt. 



No. 


Ratio of 
Sides 
in cm. 


Mean Yar. in mm. 


03 

Pa 


Exps. 


Both 
Directions. 


Down. 


Up. 


o 
M 


84 
150 
150 
150 
149 


20 : 10. 
20 : 5. 
20 : 2.5 
20:1.25 
20:0 


2.96 
2.86 
3.31 
2.83 
1.05 


1.99 
3.11 
2.21 
2.35 

.8 


3.85 

2.64 

3.83 

3.3 

1.35 


4 

1 



1 

21 



263 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

III. Fixation Method. Vertical Arrangement. Results 
of T. — The results of 683 experiments with the vertical 
arrangement upon T., who used the fixation method, 
divided into five series of six lots each, are as follows. 
See Table III, 

Examination of this table enables us to make again 
the following statements for this subject with the method 
and arrangement described : 

1. There is a tendency to error in the direction away 
from the larger square. 

2. This tendency has so few exceptions that they are 
due probably to accidental causes. 

3. The amount of this tendency is given in a number 
which fluctuates slightly about a value equal to .015 of 
the side of the larger square. 

4. At the limiting value (0) of the side of the smaller 
square there is the same tendency to error, but it is less 
than J the error when the ratio is 1:2. 

5. The tendency to error is about 50 per cent greater 
when the stimulus for fixation is moving in the direction 
contrary to that of the variation itself than when it is 
moving in the same direction. 

Table IV. — T. Fix. Method. Hor. Arrgt. 



No. 


Ratio of 

Sides in 

in cm. 


Mean Var. in mm. 




Exps. 


Both 

Directions. 


Right. 


Left. 


X 


100 
50 
50 
25 


20:5 
20 : 2.5 
20:1.25 
20:0 


1.64 

2.7 

3.25 

2.6 


1.91 
3. 

3.65 
1.53 


1.38 
2.5 

2.9 
3.9 


4 






264 



SIZE-CONTRAST 

IV. Results of T. Horizontal Arrangement. — The 
experiments on T. with the horizontal arrangement, his 
method remaining as before that which I have called the 
" fixation method," gave the results shown in Table IV. 

From the examination of this table we may make the 
following statement of results for T. : 

1. There is a uniform tendency to error in the direc- 
tion away from the larger square. 

2. This tendency is from 1.64 to 3.25 mm., i.e., in 
this case .008 to .016 the side of the larger square. 

3. This tendency varies in some direct ratio with the 
ratio of the sides of the two squares to each other. 

4. At the limiting value (0) of the side of the smaller 
square the tendency to error is the same as when the 
ratio between the sides of the two squares is -J. 

5. The tendency is about -| greater when the stimulus 
fixated is moving in the direction of the tendency to 
error (right) than when it is moving in the opposite 
direction (up). 



Table V.- 


— Sh. App. Method. 


Ver. Arrgt 










Reversals. 


Supp' mentals. 




CO 






CO 








No. 


Ratio of Sides 


£ 


cc 




£ 


m 






Rects . 


in cm. 


«+5 


o 




«JH 


o 










-W 


4J 


PH 


-+J 












> 


> 




> 


t> 










o 


O 




O 


o 


o 








1 


9 


H 
10 


3 


2 


H 




15 


20:10 


5 




14 


20:5 


1 


7 


8 


5 


1 


6 




17 


20 : 2.5 


1 


9 


10 


6 


1 


7 




33 


520:1.25) 

I 20 : j 


5 


18 
43 


23 
51 


6 

20 


4 

8 


10 


Totals 


79 




8 


28 



265 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

V. Rectification Method. — It is evident that a second 
series of indications may be obtained from the experi- 
ments given above in cases in which the reagent ex- 
presses his sense of the correctness or incorrectness of 
his result in each experiment. Both Sh. and T. were 
instructed to indicate after each experiment whether or 
not the bead gave a satisfactory result when stopped, 
and also in which direction the result should be rectified 
to give satisfaction. Records were kept of all such 
indications. Since it involved a secondary fixing of the 
mid-point, it approaches the " fixation " method ; but 
since it followed upon the earlier determination made 
when the needle was in motion, it involves influences 
akin to those of the " approach " method ; so it may be 
considered a combination of the earlier methods and a 
refinement upon both of them, for it requires a second 
act of judgment or criticism of the result already ren- 
dered in each trial. So let us call it the " rectification " 
method. 

It is further apparent that this rectification of the 
result of any given experiment may take one of four 
phases. It may be a judgment that the needle has gone 
too far, this we may call rectification by " reversal ; " 
or that it has not gone far enough, rectification by " sup- 
plementing." And each of these kinds of rectification 
will include again two instances. There will be re- 
versals when the movement is in the .direction of the 
prevailing error (i. e., away from the larger square), 
and when the movement is contrary to the direction of 
the prevailing error (i. e., toward the greater square). 
And the same two cases occur for the " supplemental " 
rectifications. 

The cases of rectification in the experiments on Sh. 
and T., both of whom were instructed to use the method, 

266 



SIZE-CONTRAST 

may be thrown into the following tables, in which the 
four kinds of rectification are distinguished. 

Results for Sh. Rectification of Results Secured by Ap- 
proach Method. Vertical Arrangement. — Giving the 
figures for Sh. in the vertical arrangement we have 
Table V. 

From this table we may conclude as follows : 

1. Of the rectification of results secured by the ap- 
proach method, the " reversals " are nearly twice as 
frequent as the " supplemental. " 

2. The " reversals "are 5 times as frequent when the 
bead moves against the tendency to error as when it 
moves in the same direction. 

3. The " supplemental " are 2J times as frequent 
when the bead moves in the direction of the error as 
when it moves in the contrary direction. 

4. Rectifications take place in jL- the entire number 
of experiments. 

Horizontal Arrangement. — The rectifications of Sh. 
for the horizontal arrangement are shown in Table VI 
(first line). 

Table VI. — Hor. Arrgt. 





No. 
Rects. 


Method. 


Ratio of 
Sides 
in cm. 


Reversals. 


Supp'mentals. 


-4-= 

o 
02 


go 

o 
u 

-(J 

> 

o 

3 


go" 

o 

> 
O 

24 

7 


•a 

O 

H 

32 
19 


g 
o 

u 

> 

o 

3 

3 
1 


CO 
O 

■+3 

o 

3 

5 


13 

-t-3 

o 
H 


Sh. 

T. 


38 
25 


App. 
Fix. 


Whole series 
lumped. 


8 
12 


6 
6 



267 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

It results from this table : 

1. The " reversals " number 5 times the " supplemen- 
tal " among the rectifications of data derived by the 
approach method. 

2. The " reversals " are 3 times as many when the bead 
moves in the direction contrary to the prevailing error 
(i. e., toward the larger square), as when it moves in 
the opposite direction. 

3. The supplemental are equally divided between 
the two cases of opposite movement of the bead. 

4. The number of rectifications is about J of the num- 
ber of experiments. 

Results for T. Rectifications of Results Secured by 
the Fixation Method. Vertical Arrangement. — The 
results of T. with the vertical arrangements appear in 
Table VII. 

Table VII. — T. Fix. Method. Ver. Arrgt. 







Ratio of 


Reversals. 


Supple 'tals. 




go 






co 








No. 


Sides 


g 


co 




fa 


co 






Reets. 


in cm. 




o 




4h 


o 














i — i 


■£ 


■43 


i— j 








t> 


> 




> 


> 










o 


o 


o 


o 


o 


o 








3 


% 


H 


7 


3 


H 




10 


20:10 







3 


10 




19 


20:5 


12 


5 


17 


i 


1 


2 




19 


20 : 2.5 


3 


1 


4 


6 


9 


15 




31 


5 20: 1.25 I 
) 20 : \ 


7 
22 


9 . 


16 


4 


11 


15 


Total . . 


79 




15 


37 


18 


24 


42 



Table VII. shows the following: 

1. Rectifications by " supplementing " are \ more fre- 

268 



SIZE-CONTRAST 

quent than those by "reversal" when the results are 
secured by the fixation method. 

2. The " reversals" are J more frequent when the 
bead moves in the direction of error than when it moves 
in the contrary direction. 

3. The " supplemental " are J more frequent when 
the bead moves in the direction contrary to that of the 
prevailing error than when it moves in the same direc- 
tion as the error. 

4. The entire number of rectifications is 1 of the en- 
tire number of experiments. 

Horizontal Arrangement. — The rectifications of T. for 
the horizontal arrangement are given in Table VII 
(second line). 

1. Results. — The "reversals" are three times the 
" supplemental " in the fixation method, horizontal ar- 
rangement. 

2. The reversals are \ more when the bead moves in 
the direction of error than when it moves in the opposite 
direction. 

3. The " supplemental " are five times more when the 
beads move contrary to the direction of error than when 
it moves in the same direction. This result, however, 
is based on too small a number of cases to be taken as a 
numerical ratio. 

4. The number of rectifications is \ of the whole 
number of experiments. 

VI. General Interpretation of Results. — We are now 
able to gather up the results shown in the earlier tables 
in some more comprehensive statements, based upon the 
whole number of experiments taken together. 

I. Considering the results for the direction and amount 
of error without regarding the influence of the direction 
of movement of the light-bead, we may plot curves 

269 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

showing the tendency and amount of error for each of 
the two arrangements by each of the two methods. In 
Fig. 2 the horizontal ordinate represents the constant 
series of ratios of the square sides to each other; the 
vertical ordinate, the size of the error and its duration 
(above the abscissa denoting error away from the larger 
square). Curves (1) and (2) give the results by the 
approach method, vertical and horizontal arrangements 
respectively; curves (3) and (4) the results by the fixa- 



4 ■ 



*■—-/■■ 



/ 



./ 



/ 



FSg. S 



Me 



0) 

— ~i2>. 



M 



H 



tion method, vertical and horizontal respectively. The 
location of the various points of the curves is determined 
in each instance by the figures given in the appropriate 
table above. The curves are numbered to correspond 
with the respective tables. 

Inspection of the four curves gives certain general 
results which unite and summarize the results already 
shown from the separate tables above. 

1. The four curves (representing 1,928 experiments) 
agree in establishing a tendency to error away from the 
larger square of from 1 to 4.5 mm. when the side of the 
larger square is 20 cm. 

270 



SIZE-CONTRAST 

2. The close parallelism of three of the curves in their 
common direction, and the general parallelism of all the 
four, establishes the fact that the tendency to error in- 
creases with the relative increase of the side of the 
larger square. 

3. The position of curves (1) and (3), considered in 
relation to the position of curves (2) and (4), shows 
that the tendency to error, when the squares are ar- 




ranged vertically, is about twice as great as when they 
are arranged horizontally. 

4. Comparison of curves (1) and (2) with curves (3) 
and (4) shows that the method of fixation gives more 
uniform results than the method of approach ; and also 
that the difference in results between the vertical and 
horizontal arrangements is less when the fixation 
method is used. It follows from this that eye-move- 
ments over a line hinder the correct estimate of the parts 
of that line, and that this influence of eye-movement 
is greater for vertical than for horizontal directions. 

II. Considering the results with regard to the direc- 
tion of movement of the light-bead by both methods and 
in both arrangements, we may plot the curves of Fig. 3, 

271 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

in which the ordinates remain as in Fig. 2, the points on 
curves (1) and (2) give the amount of error for the 
several contrast ratios for the case of movements of the 
bead away from and toward the larger square respec- 
tively by the approach method, and the points on curves 
(3) and (4) give the amount of error for the same two 
cases respectively, by the fixation method. These 
amounts are reached by combining the figures for 
" down " and " right " movements in the tables of verti- 
cal and horizontal arrangements of the approach method, 
for each contrast ratio, and combining similarly the " up " 
and " left " results of the corresponding tables of the 
fixation method. 

Inspection of these four curves (again representing the 
entire 1,928 experiments) leads us to certain conclusions. 

1. Comparisons of curves (1) and (3) with curves 
(2) and (4) shows that the error is greater when the 
bead is moving in the direction of the error. 

2. This is especially the case when the approach 
method is adopted, the error then being twice as great 
when the movement is in the direction of the normal 
error as when it is in the contrary direction : compari- 
sons of curves (1) and (2). 

3. It follows that the influence already found to be 
due to eye-movements varies according to the particular 
direction of the movement along the line explored. If 
the eye-movement is toward the larger of the areas con- 
trasted, it tends to correct the normal error of judg- 
ment in the estimation of the line which connects the 
two areas. If the movement is, on the contrary, away 
from the greater area, it exaggerates the normal error of 
judgment. 

III. The details of the instances of " rectification " 
given above serve to confirm these general conclusions, 

272 



SIZE-CONTRAST 

both as to the normal error itself and as to the influence 
of eye-movements upon it. By the approach method 
the rectifications by reversal are two to five times more 
frequent than those by supplementing. This shows that 
the rectifications in this instance are really corrections 
of the influences now found to be due to eye-movements. 
Further, reversals are three to four times as frequent 
when the bead moves against the tendency to error as 
when it moves in the direction of this tendency. This 
shows that these corrections are much more likely in 
direction opposite to that in which we now find the real 
contrast error to occur. When moving in the direction 
of the contrast error the eye-movement influence gets 
support from that error, and so fails of detection, and 
even secures supplementing in this direction more fre- 
quently than the movement in the opposite direction 
does. This is an indirect determination of the true 
direction of the contrast error in agreement with the 
direct experimental result. 

The rectifications in the fixation method, on the other 
hand, are equally divided between the " reversals " and 
the " supplemental, " showing that the influence of eye- 
movement is largely eliminated by this method. And 
further, the distribution of both supplemental and re- 
versals between the two cases of movement, in one 
direction or the other, is now directly reversed, i. e.\ the 
reversals are more frequent when the bead moves in the 
direction of error, and the supplementals when it moves 
contrary to this direction, a result which seems to show 
that in this case the tendency to error from contrast is 
in conflict with the normal influence of eye -movements, 
and the correction is made to increase the latter in one 
direction, and to diminish the former (or their sum) in 
the other direction. 

18 273 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

The entire number of rectifications of all kinds (about 
\ of the whole number of experiments) may be taken 
as a sort of quantitative indication of the function of 
second-judgment, or deliberation, upon sensory deter- 
minations of such a complex character as those involved 
in these experiments. It is interesting to note that this 
second judgment, however, does not tend in the general 
result to correct the error of first judgment ; for there 
are about |- more cases of rectifications by displacement 
toward S 1 (the direction of the error) than toward S. 
The only case in which the correction does work to give 
greater accuracy to the result is that of the use of the 
fixation method, where both the original and second 
judgments are comparatively free from eye-movements 
and their after effects. 

Finally, the great uniformity of the error of judgment 
is seen in the small number of cases (69 in the entire 
series of 1,928 experiments) in which the mid-point was 
located in the direction opposite to the prevailing error 
(that is, located too far toward the large square). And 
even this number represents too high a figure, since 
the sum of the variations of this kind in all but two 
series gave only 28 cases (i. e., in 1,679 experiments) ; 
the two giving the very abnormally large figures 20 in 
100 experiments (app. method, horiz. arrangement) and 
21 in 149 experiments (fix. method, vert, arrangement) 
being evidently affected by some temporary influences. 

A series of experiments has already been begun with 
a stationary stimulus (thus ruling out the influence of 
eye-movements) 1 ; and I hope also to complicate the case 
with variations planned to introduce aesthetic elements 
into the problem. 

1 See the next paper. 
274 



XV 

AN OPTICAL ILLUSION 1 

I reproduce, in one of the accompanying diagrams 
(A), the arrangement used in a research published in 
The Psychological Review (II., May, 1895, p. 244), 2 the 
result of which was to show that the judgment, i. e., of 
the midpoint between two such squares as those of 
Figure A, is subject to illusion. The actual midpoint, 
marked by the short bar on the line of connection be- 
tween the squares, is regularly judged to be too far 
toward the smaller. I should like to gather further 
results by the use of the Figures A and B, and your 
readers may be willing to assist as follows : 

Ask people of both sexes, but recording the differ- 
ence of sex, the following questions strictly in the order 
named, first of Figure A. They should be entirely 
ignorant of the experiment and its results. 

Question 1. Holding the figure before the eyes with 
the bottom of the page down, is the line connecting the 
squares bisected by the short line or not, and if not, is 
the real midpoint further to the right (R) or to the 
left (L)? 

Question 2. Holding the page with the bottom of it 
turned to the right hand, ask whether the midpoint is 

1 From Science, November 27, 1896. 

2 See the preceding paper. 

275 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

marked by the line or whether it is farther up (U) or 
farther down (D). 

Question 3. Holding the figure with the bottom of the 
page upwards, ask as in question 1. 

Question 4. Holding the figure with the bottom of the 
page toward the left hand, ask as in question 2. 

Then taking Figure B, ask the same questions in 



Fig. A. 



the same order, being careful to have the person still 
altogether uninstructed as to the results of the first 
series and also to connect the two series, carefully dis- 
tinguished, with the same person by name or initials. 

When using one figure, the other should be covered. 

The results, whether from one person or from many, 
may be sent to the undersigned, who will receive them 
with thanks. Results from those who know what the 
illusion is and what to expect need not be sent, except 

276 



AN OPTICAL ILLUSION 

in cases of persons who do not get the illusion at all, or 
who only get it for one of the figures. 

Any known defects of eye-sight should be reported ; 
also indications of tastes or pursuits, as of architects, 
artists, etc., likely to modify the results. 

I should also be glad to be referred to any literature 
which seems to touch upon this illusion. 



Fig. B. 

The interest of this method of investigating the illu- 
sion is that it exactly reverses the conditions of the 
research reported in the preceding paper. There the 
midpoint was determined by the reagent, and was placed 
too far toward the smaller square. If this be a true 
illusion, it was argued, the actual middle should be 
judged too far toward the smaller square. This was 
fully proved to be the case by the replies which came 

277 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

in by hundreds. The following summary report of 
these and other results not yet published in detail is 
from the Proceedings of the American Psychological 
Association, December, 1897 1 1 

An Optical Illusion. — This report gave the result of 
further experiments of the " Illusion " reported above, i. e., 
that the point fixed upon as the midpoint between two 
square areas is located too far toward the smaller area, the 
amount of the displacement increasing with the ratio of 
the larger to the smaller square side. The following new 
results are reported : 1. The earlier results are confirmed 
on additional observers. 2. The illusion holds, though 
much lessened in amount and with some exceptions, for the 
determination of the midpoint between two parallel lines 
of different lengths. 3. The. illusion requires a figure of 
certain — not exactly determined — maximum size, *, e., the 
illusion does not appear when the eyes of the observer are too 
near, but appears when he retires backward from the figure. 

The author also reports having established the reverse 
illusion, i. e., the misjudgment of the midpoint when act- 
ually marked, in the figure just described. It is held to lie 
too far toward the larger square. This result is completely 
established by returns in a great many answers to a request 
printed in Science (November 27, 1896) with an accom- 
panying figure, — principally returns from students col- 
lected by teachers of psychology and science. 

The author intends to investigate the effect upon the 
illusion of variation in the distance between the areas, and 
also to test various explanations of it. He has already 
found that the element of "perspective" has probably 
little influence on it; 2 also that the principle of "equilib- 

1 See The Psychological Review, March, 1898, p. 166. A more popular 
exposition with discussion of the possible applications of the illusion in 
architecture, etc., is given in my Story of the Mind, chap, vi., Hi. 

2 This is reversed by later experiment ; it is probable that " perspec- 
tive " enters largely into the case. See further below (and Figure DJ. . 

278 



AN OPTICAL ILLUSION 

rium " does not account for it, seeing that (a) the illusion 
is contrary in its direction to that which this principle would 
produce, and that (b) it holds under conditions which ex- 
clude the operation of this principle. The fact of this 
reverse illusion establishes the point made in the original 
paper, that the experimental conditions — involving the 
following of a light-bead along the line — were, under the 
control methods employed, entirely adequate, and so meets 
the criticisms of Binet and Witasek. Certain aesthetic 
applications of the illusion will be indicated in the detailed 
paper. 

Variations of this illusion are shown in Plate C, 
Figures 1-5 2 in each of which the short upright bar is 
the central point, and is seen somewhat displaced toward 
the larger masses or longer lines on one side. Of special 
interest is Figure 5' (Plate C) which shows the same 
deviation when one figure is inside the other. 

Of the general explanations, that of contrast (which 
means only that sizes, distances, and positions in the 
field of vision are judged relatively to one another, 
whatever we may discover to be the more special reason 
for it in particular cases) has been invoked ; indeed it 
was to study visual contrast that the experiments given 
in the preceding paper were first devised. 2 It has been 
made probable, however, especially by Thiery, that an 
element of perspective enters into many geometrical 
illusions — L e., the viewing of a figure as if part of it 
extended back from the plane of the paper, an arrange- 

1 After Jud.d: see his important paper, Psychological Review, May, 
1899, pp. 241 ff. From here on the text, and also Figs. D and E, are now 
first published. 

2 It is also so classed by Sanford, Course in Experimental Psychology, 
experiment 197. See Sanford's article " Optical Illusions," in the writer's 
Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, for a general treatment of the 
subjects, with many figures and citations of literature. 

279 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 





FlG.l. 



N. 




Fig.2. 



i — < 



Fig.3. 











1 













Fig, 5. 

C. 1-5 

280 



AN OPTICAL ILLUSION 




Fig.D. 




FiG.E. 



281 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

ment in which the distant object is normally smaller 
and the line of distance or perspective is foreshortened. 
This influence probably enters in this case : as may be 
seen by viewing Fig. D in the two possible perspec- 
tives. First bring up the large square by focussing it 
as nearer and view the smaller one as more distant — 
the whole making a tunnel opening having its large end 
towards the observer. In this case the illusion is exag- 
gerated ; the bar seems still nearer the large end of the 
tunnel. This would mean that the normal illusion is 
due to our tendency to view the figure — and similar 
figures, such as the two concentric circles or squares — 
as representing a solid object extending backward. If, 
however, we reverse our visual accommodation so as to 
make the figure a truncated pyramid lying on its side 
with the small end toward the observer (the large 
square above thus being beyond the plane of the paper), 
the illusion tends to disappear. This comes out better, 
if after practising on Fig. D, in which the corners are 
connected by lines to favor the projection, the same be 
tried with Figure 5, Plate C, in which the bar falls on 
the plane of one side of the pyramid. 1 Similarly the 
other figures of Plate C may be viewed as solid objects 
standing on one end or the other with corresponding 
effect upon the illusion. 2 See also Fig. E. 

1 The writer lias been interested, since knowing of this illusion, in 
reproducing the conditions of judging such a midpoint in actual perspec- 
tive. The conditions were admirably fulfilled in looking down from the 
hill-top upon the funicular railway at Marseilles. The two cars in their 
passage in contrary directions balance each other and meet precisely at 
the half-way distance. The point at which they meet seems, however, to 
the observer at the top to be much too far toward the lower end of the 
road. 

2 The matter is a difficult one to experiment on, seeing that individuals 
vary so much, both in their natural tendencies to see in perspective, and 
also in their ability to shift from one accommodation to another. 

282 



XVI 

NEW QUESTIONS IN MENTAL CHRONOMETRY 1 

In view of an article in the Medical Record for March 4, 
1893, it may be of interest to its readers to have a further 
note on the subject of the "Psychology of Reaction- 
time." The distinction between "sensory" and "mus- 
cular " reaction was first made public by Lange, 2 work- 
ing under Wundt ; and it seemed from his results, and 
others immediately following him, 3 that the distinction 
was sound. Indeed it appears reasonable from the point 
of view of general psychological theory. All we know of 
the attention, as well as what we know of the relation 
of attention to voluntary movement, makes it seem likely 
that a reaction would be shorter if the attention be con- 
centrated beforehand on the proposed movement (mus- 
cular or motor reaction), than if it be concentrated on 
the signal to which the subject is instructed to react 
(sensory reaction). 4 Recent researches, however, have 
given results which have tended to make a reconsidera- 
tion of the question necessary ; indeed some experiments 
have been so negative that certain investigators are 
disposed to throw over the distinction altogether. 5 

I am sure that this would be to go too far. I have en- 

1 From the Medical Record (N. Y.), April 15, 1893. 

2 Philosophische Studien, iv., p. 479. 

8 Martius, ibid., vi., p. 167 ; Titchener, ibid., viii., p. 138. 

4 This is the distinction in question. 

5 Cattell, Philosophische Studien, viii., p. 403. 

283 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

deavored incidentally, in an article now in print for the 
July issue of the Philosophical Review, 1 to account for the 
conflicting results of experiment in this field by borrow- 
ing from the medical psychologists the results of their 
brilliant analysis of the speech function, on the basis 
of its pathology. The recognition of the great forms of 
aphasia — i.e., sensory and motor — and the correspond- 
ing recognition of the existence of visual, auditory, and 
•motor speech types, gives a strong presumption that the 
distinction between sensory and motor in the voluntary 
movements of speech and writing applies as well to vol- 
untary movements of all kinds ; that is, to all movements 
which have been learned by attention and effort. This 
means that a man is an " auditive," or a " visual," or a 
"motor" in his voluntary movements generally. His 
attention is trained by habit, education, etc., more upon 
one class of images than upon others, his mind fills up 
more easily with images of this class, and his mental pro- 
cesses and voluntary reactions proceed by preference 
along these channels of easiest function. 

If this be true it is evident that a man's reaction-time 
will show the influence of his memory type. The motor- 
reaction we should expect to be most abbreviated in the 
man of the motor- type ; and less abbreviated, or not so 
at all, in the "visual" or "auditory" man. And ex- 
perimental results must perforce show extraordinary 
variations as long as these typical varieties are not taken 
account of. We are accordingly, I think, a long way off 
from any such exact statement of absolute difference be- 
tween sensory and motor reaction-time as Wundt makes 
in his last edition. 2 

i Article entitled "Internal Speech and Song," Phil. Rev., July, 1892 
(chap. xiv. of Mental Development). 

2 Phjsiologische Psychologie, 3d ed., ii., pp. 261 ff. 

284 



MENTAL CHRONOMETRY 

The position is in direct accord with Pick's * interest- 
ing argument for the central seat of the motor disturb- 
ances which result, in certain cases of anaesthesia, from 
the closure of the eyes. It is really the attention which 
is disturbed in these cases, through the loss of its usual 
support from the sense of sight ; it is not a loss of " mus- 
cle sense " only. 

In addition — and this I wish to bring to the attention 
of the medical men who busy themselves with aphasia — 
the indications of memory " type " afforded by reaction- 
times ought to support the analysis of speech from aphasic 
cases (that is, when we psychologists have gone as far on 
our side as the physicians have on theirs ! ). A man 
with a relatively short " sensory reaction " would be of 
the sensory type, and would be peculiarly liable to sen- 
sory forms of aphasia — loss of speech through word- 
blindness, word-deafness, etc., and to paraphasia and 
paragraphia. On the other hand, one whose " motor " re- 
action-time is very short, would be liable to loss of speech 
from interference with his muscular memories. For ex- 
ample, I think it is likely that patients like those of 
Grashey, Bastian, Charcot, and others, who could read 
or speak only by tracing the letters with the hand-, were 
probably of the motor type and would have given rela- 
tively short motor reactions. I am not sure that such a 
correspondence could be made out in actual cases of 
aphasia, but it is an interesting deduction, and possibly 
medical men may find opportunity of testing it with the 
aid of a portable instrument such as the chronometre 
d'Arsonval. 

In my laboratory a research is now nearing completion 
which has given experimental ground for this main posi- 
tion. I have three practised reaction-time subjects who 

1 Zeitschrift fur Psychologies etc., iv., pp. 261 ff. 
285 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

illustrate three distinct types. In one, the motor (hand) 
reaction is shorter than the sensory (hearing) ; in the sec- 
ond, the two kinds are about equal ; while in the third (a 
musician), the sensory is about one-quarter shorter than 
the motor. 1 I hope, before publishing the results in de- 
tail, to bring other tests to bear for the determination of 
the relative influence of sight, sound, and muscle-sense 
respectively in the reactions of the different types. One 
of these tests has gone far enough, however, to enable 
me to make a further distinction in the character of 
motor reactions, i. e., between what may be called vis- 
ual motor reaction (motor attention with sight of the 
organ employed to react — involving the optische Be- 
wegungsbilde of the Germans) and kinesthetic motor 
reaction (motor attention without sight of the reacting 
organ). In my experiments, so far, the " visual motor " 
reaction is shorter than the " kinesthetic motor," except 
in subjects of the extreme motor type ; in these latter the 
" kinesthetic motor " is shorter, the visual motor-time 
approximating the sensory reaction-time. This research 
was suggested by the cases already referred to of loss of 
voluntary movement through closure of the eyes, taken 
with the further observation that even though the eyes 
are open in these cases, voluntary movement is still im- 
possible until the gaze of the patient be directed to the 
particular limb in question. The distinction between 
" visual motor " and " kinesthetic motor " reaction-time 
has interest, I think, from other points of view as well. 2 

1 Cattell reports a similar case, loc. cit., p. 406. 

2 See the next paper for the full report of this research. 



286 



XVII 

TYPES OF REACTION i 

The experiments reported in this paper were carried 
out in the University of Toronto in 1892-93. Three 
questions were set for research, all of them bearing on 
the question of the degree of relativity of reaction-times : 
as to the difference of a single individual's times, ac- 
cording as there were subjective (attention) or objective 
(qualitative stimulus) changes in the conditions of his 
reaction ; or as to differences of reaction-times for differ- 
ent individuals under identical conditions. To secure 
results comparable in the respects in which comparisons 
were desired, certain precautions were made, as follows : 
(1) each reagent reacted at the same hour from day to 
day, and at the same hour with each other reagent whose 
reaction was to be compared with his ; (2) the order of 
change in the conditions of reaction (as sensory-motor, 
light-dark, visual-kinsesthetic, etc.) was kept in the main 
the same for the different reagents. 

The Hipp and D'Arsonval chronoscopes were used, 
both controlled by the records of a Konig tuning-fork 
recording on the drum of the Marey motor. The 
"light" reactions were taken in a room of good south 
morning exposure, and those in the dark, in a dark 
closet of the same room. The stimulus was in all cases 
an auditory one — a sharp metallic click — and the re- 

1 With the assistance of W. J. Shaw. From The Psychological Review, 
May, 1895. 

287 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

acting movement was a pressure downward of the right 
forefinger (in the case of the D'Arsonval instrument, 
a pinch of that finger and the thumb). The reagents 
were, besides the writers (B. and S.), Mr. Faircloth (F.), 
a student who had had only the experience gained from 
the practical work in this subject of the course in ex- 
perimental psychology. His reactions were ready and 
unconfused, and from all appearances he was a normal 
and more than usually suitable man for such work. 
The fourth, Mr. Crawford (C), is an honor student in 
this subject in Princeton. His reactions were taken in 
the course of another investigation, and being so few 
in number, they are included only because they indicate 
a case of a capable reagent whose sensory is shorter than 
his motor reaction. We hope to test him further. 

I. Variations in the Results. — : Table I shows the 
relative reliability of the two instruments in these 
experiments. 

Table I. — Clock-corrections. 



Instrument. 


Const. Error. 
sec. 


Yar. Error, 
sec. 


D'Ars., 

Hipp, 


.19 
.019 


.0622 
.0156 



All the results secured by each instrument are cor- 
rected by the constant error of that instrument, before 
being used either for comparison among themselves or 
for compounding with the results of the other instru- 
ment, in the tables which follow. The smaller variable 
error of the Hipp chronoscope makes the results of that 
instrument much more reliable in the matter of absolute 

288 



TYPES OF REACTION 

time-measurement. But in the conclusions drawn below, 
only those results are used in which the quantity sought 
is a relative one, and in which the two clocks confirmed 
each other in giving ratios of difference of the two quan- 
tities compared, both of which are in the same sense, and 
each of which is larger than the largest possible ratio of 
difference arising from the variable error of the clock to 
which it belongs. 

The mean variations are not given in the tables which 
follow, because they are too complex to be of any value. 
These variations were, different for the two clocks, as 
we should expect from the variable errors of the instru- 
ments themselves ; they also varied with the disposition 
of the subject in the various groups of results which 
are treated together. 1 The different mean variations for 
the different lots of experiments varied from 10 <x to 
20 a (o-==.001 sec). For this reason no deductions 
are attempted except those evident on the surface of 
the results themselves. 

Table II. — Types of Reaction. 







Sensory. 


Kin. Motor. 


Vis. Motor. 


Av. Motor. 


Sub- 


No. 
Exps. 










ject. 


No. 


Time 


No. 


Time 


No. 


Time 


No 


Time. 








in or. 


966 


in a. 




in a. 






B. 


2490 


1043 


178 


149 


481 


171 


160 


S. 


2572 


1017 


235 


995 


184 


560 


195 




187 


F. 


820 


290 


164 


260 


202.3 


270 


205.5 




204 


C. 


212 


84 


132 










128 


157 



1 Finer distinctions were aimed at in some of the series, such as placing 
the sound stimulus on one side only, or in the median plane below the 
head, etc., as well as arranging for the difference between light and dark 
environment. 

19 289 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

II. Results : Sensory and Motor Reactions. — Table II 
gives the results of experiments on four persons designed 
to test the current distinction between " sensory " and 
motor ("muscular") reactions. 

It follows from Table II : (1) that the current dis- 
tinction between sensory and motor reactions does not 
hold in the sense that the motor reaction is always 
shorter than the sensory, for in the case of F. the motor 
reaction is 40 a longer, i. e.,\ of this subject's average 
sensory reaction time. (2) As between B. and S., in 
the case of . each of whom the motor-time is shorter, 
there is a great difference in the relative length of the 
sensory to the motor. In B. the sensory time is only 
18 cr, or about ^ longer than the motor, while in the case 
of S. the sensory is 48 a longer, or about \ ; and this 
despite the close agreement of the two subjects in their 
absolute motor-time. We would seem to have, there- 
fore, in these three observers three cases shown, two 
giving very pronounced results; one a longer motor- 
time by J, and the other a longer sensory by J. The 
third subject, B., seems to fall between these extremes, 
giving a difference in favor of the motor reaction, it is 
true, but a much smaller difference. 

The tables also give us reason for accepting the truth 
of the distinction between two kinds of motor reaction. 
In both B. and S., whose motor reactions are shorter than 
the sensory, we find a difference in the length of the 
motor reaction according as the attention is given to 
the movement by thought of the hand, the eyes being 
blindfolded, or as the attention is fixed upon the hand, 
which is seen. The former I have called the kinesthetic 
motor reaction, the latter the visual motor. In B. the 
visual motor is 22 a, or about -J longer than the " kines- 
thetic " — that is, it is practically equal to this subject's 

290 



TYPES OF REACTION 

sensory time ; while in S. the kinesthetic motor is 11 <r 
shorter than the " visual." With F., on the contrary, 
there is no distinction between the two kinds, any possi- 
ble trace of it seeming to be lost in the excessive pre- 
ponderance, in facility, of the sensory kind of reaction. 

The table as a whole, then, supports the views : (1) 
when the motor reaction is short in relation to the sen- 
sory (case of S.), then this motor reaction is purest, 
freest from sensory influences, such as sight, etc. ; (2) 
when the motor reaction is not pure, then it is retarded 
by such influences as sight (case of B.) ; (3) where the 
motor reaction is relatively difficult and delayed, as com- 
pared with the sensory (case of F.), there this prime 
difference renders all kinds of motor reactions equally 
lengthy and hesitating. B. seems to stand midway 
between the two others in this respect. 

As I said some time ago, in making a first report upon 
the outcome of some of these experiments : 1 "In sub- 
jects of the motor type the * kinesthetic motor' is 
shorter, the ' visual motor ' time approximating the 
sensory reaction time." 

III. Light and Dark Reactions to Sound. — The fore- 
going deductions concerning the difference between B. 
and S., as respects motor and sensory reactions, and also 
as respects the distinction between visual and kines- 
thetic motor reactions, are confirmed by results of a 
research on the same two subjects, in which the attempt 
was made to investigate the influence of vision. Each 
reagent gave a series of reactions in the light of an 
ordinary laboratory room, and then repeated the series 
under the same general conditions, but in a dark cham- 
ber. In this case, in order to make the results of the 
two series comparable, the kinesthetic form of motor 

1 New York Medical Record, April 15, 1893, pp. 455 f. (see above, p. 286). 

291 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 



reaction was necessary in the series taken in the light, 
since only that kind of motor reaction was possible in 
the dark. The results are given in Table III. 

Table III. — Keactions in Light and Dark. 





Light. 


Dark. 


Subject. 


Sensory. 


Motor. 


Sensory. 


Motor. 




No. 


Av. 
in o-. 


No. 


Av. 
in <r. 


No. 


Av. 
in o-. 


No. 


Av. 
in o\ 


B. 

S. 


541 
537 


176 
237 


979 
1190 


164 

158 


502 

480 


184 
219 


468 
469 


138 
179 



On examination the results of this table, compared with 
those of the preceding table, may be stated as follows : 
We find for B. that the sensory reaction is practically 
the same, whether he react in the dark or in the light 
(the latter is less by 8 cr, which is insignificant in view 
of the variable error). This shows this subject's inde- 
pendence of vision in the sensory reaction to auditory 
stimulations, and is in agreement with the results of 
Table II (in which there is a similar difference between 
the sensory and visual motor, the former being longer 
by 7 cr). S., on the other hand, shows a shortening of 
the sensory reaction when in the dark by 18 cr, but a 
lengthening of the motor reaction when in the dark by 
21 cr, or about ^. The latter result shows this subject's 
dependence upon vision only in the motor kind of re- 
action. 1 

1 The "dark reaction" was not secured from F., the "sensory" sub- 
ject ; but we hope to report further results obtained from C, the similar 
case found later at Princeton. 

292 



TYPES OF REACTION 

IV. Interpretation. — Admitting that these results 
indicate clearly the existence of persons whose sensory 
reactions to sound are shorter than their motor reactions, 
and that there are in some individuals differences in 
the length of the motor reaction, according as it is 
made in the light or in the dark, we may make some 
general remarks on the theory of these differences. 

These results should be compared with earlier ones, a 
matter which is made easier by reference to the concise 
summing up of the literature of the subject by Titch- 
ener in Mind} We find cases of relatively shorter 
sensory times similar to mine reported (for electrical 
stimulus) by Cattell, 2 and (for sound stimulus) by 
Flournoy. 3 We may accordingly say that such individ- 
ual differences are clearly established, and must here- 
after be acknowledged and accounted for in any adequate 
theory of reaction. 

The attempt of Wundt, Kiilpe, and others to rule 
these results out, on the ground of incompetency in the 
reagents, is in my opinion a flagrant argumentum in cir- 
culo. Their contention is that a certain mental Anlage 
or aptitude is necessary in order to experimentation on 
reaction-times. And when we ask what the Anlage is, 

1 January, 1895, p. 74. 

2 Philos. Studien, viii., 403. 

3 Arch, des Sci. Phy. et Nat., xxvii., p. 575, and xxviii., 319. Titch- 
ener, in his summing up, does not cite the cases of Flournoy nor the 
earlier report of one of my present cases (F.) in the Medical Record, April 
15, 1893, although they tell directly against his own views. My earliest 
case was noted by me in the autumn of 1892, and the note in the Medical 
Record was written in December, 1892, before I saw either Cattell's or 
Flournoy's articles. The sentences quoted from my Senses and Intellect 
by Titchener in Mind, loc. cit., were based upon my own reaction-times, 
taken earlier when I had no reason to doubt the universality of the expe- 
rience, as claimed by Lange and Wundt. Titchener is accordingly wrong 
in citing me as favoring their position. 

293 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

we are told that the only indication of it is the ability 
of the reagent to turn out reactions which give the dis- 
tinction between motor and sensory time, which Wundt 
and his followers consider the proper one. In other 
words, only certain cases prove their result, and these 
cases are selected because they prove that result. It is 
easy to see that this manner of procedure is subversive 
both of scientific method and of safely-acquired results 
in individual psychology. For the question comes : what 
of these very differences of individual Anlage f How 
did they arise ? — what do they mean ? — why do they 
give different reaction-time results ? To neglect these 
questions, and rule out all Anlagen but one, is to get the 
psychology of some individuals and force it upon others, 
and thus to make the reaction-method of investigation 
simply the handmaid to dogma. 

The attempts to explain the relative shortness of the 
" muscular " reaction, also, by those who hold its short- 
ness to be a universal fact, have been unfortunate. It 
has been held that the muscular reaction is shorter be- 
cause it is semi-automatic ; the thought of a movement, 
i. e., attention to it, being already the beginning of the 
innervation necessary to its production. This is very 
true as a principle, I think ; but it is just the application 
of this principle which makes it necessary on the part 
of some to restrict reaction work to people of a special 
aptitude. For in all those cases, either of particular 
reactions in one individual or of all reactions in other 
individuals, in which the movement is not so clearly 
picturable as to be firmly and steadily held in the atten- 
tion, to these cases the principle does not apply. On the 
contrary, to all cases where it is difficult to get the 
attention fixed upon a motor representative of the move- 
ment, a very different principle applies, as others have 

294 



TYPES OF REACTION 

remarked. The very attempt to picture a movement as 
a movement — by putting the attention on its motor 
aspect in consciousness — embarrasses, confuses, and 
delays the execution of that movement in these cases. 
If a marksman attend to his finger on the trigger he 
misses the target; if a ball-player attend to his hands 
he "muffs " the ball; if a musician think of each finger- 
movement he breaks down. The musician in the labo- 
ratory is usually, indeed, a glaring instance of unsuitable 
Anlage I 

So it is evident that these two principles need recon- 
ciling in their application to reaction-times, the princi- 
ples, i. e., (1) that the thought of a movement already 
begins it, facilitates it, quickens it ; and (2) that attention 
to a practised movement, in many instances, embarrasses 
it, hinders it, lengthens it. 

Now the practical reconciliation of just these two 
principles has been made in another great department of 
fact, and the plotting of the cerebral arrangements 
which underlie them worked out — a solution which has 
such evident application here that I wonder at its tardy 
appreciation. I refer to the work in the pathology of 
aphasia, and the general theory of mental " tj-pes " 
which now goes for a safe discovery in the discussions 
of " internal speech," " sensory vs. motor defects " of 
speech, etc. I published early in 1893 the hypothesis 
to account for the variations in this matter of reaction- 
time differences now printed in the preceding paper. 

It was a sense of the great naturalness and probability 
of this hypothesis that led, early in the fall of 1892, to 
the experiments on " visual " and " kinesthetic " motor 
reactions whose results are given above in this paper. 1 

1 At the Philadelphia meeting of the American Psychological Associa- 
tion, on Dec. 28, 1892, I proposed the hypothesis informally. I venture 

295 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

The secure establishing of cases which show sensory 
reactions shorter than motor (i. e., the cases now reported 
by Cattell, Flournoy, and myself), together with the 
probable distinction between the " visual " and " kinees- 
thetic " forms of motor time, make it advisable that this 
hypothesis should be put in clearer evidence. I shall 
therefore proceed to state the case for it briefly on the 
basis of the facts as they are now known. 

The doctrine of "types" rests upon certain facts 
which may be briefly summed up. A voluntary motor 
performance — say speech — depends in each particular 
exercise of it, upon the possibility of getting clearly in 
mind (interieur, innerlich) some mental picture, image, 
presentation, which has come to stand for or represent 
the particular movements involved. This mental " cue " 
or representative may belong to either of two great 
classes : it may be a " sensory " cue or a " motor " cue. 
People are of the sensory type or of the motor type for 
speech according as their cue in speech is sensory or 
motor ; that is, according as in speaking they think of 
the sounds of the words as heard, the look of the words 
as written, etc., — the cues furnished by the special 
senses associated habitually with speech — this on the 
one hand ; or according as, on the other hand, they think 
of or have in mind the movements of the vocal organs, 
lips, tongue, etc., involved in speech. In the " motor " 
people there are incipient movements in mind ; in the 
"sensory" people there are special sense images in 

to make these personal explanations since a somewhat similar explanation 
of his cases was advanced by Professor Flournoy, of Geneva, in the 
articles cited above. I was not acquainted with Professor Flournoy's 
views, until, a year later at the New York meeting of the Association, 
they were brought to my attention, as given in abstracts in the Revue 
Philosophique and the Zeit. fur Psych. I return to Professor Flournoy's 
position later on in this paper. 

296 



TYPES OF REACTION 

mind. All this is now so clear from the pathological 
cases examined that the theory of localization of brain 
areas and their connections is applied to the successful 
exploration of damages of the brain when aphasic symp- 
toms furnish the main diagnostic resource. 

Now, let us see how in these cases of aphasia the two 
principles spoken of are applied. Suppose we agree 
with the neurologists in saying that the function of the 
" cue " — the mental image, be it either motor or sensory, 
which when thought of enables a man to speak — is to 
release energy from its own brain-seat, along association 
fibres or pathways, to the motor-seat which sends its 
discharges out to bring about the movement. Then the 
difference between sensory and motor people is simply 
that different centres — different " cue "-seats — have 
these connections with the motor speech centres best or 
better developed. A man who speaks best when he 
thinks of the sounds of the words has his best " cue "- 
seat in the auditory centre ; and his best pathway to the 
the speech motor-centre goes out from this " cue "-seat. 
In the case of the man who speaks best when he thinks 
of the utterance of words, the same may be said of the 
muscle-sense seat. 

So it is evident — quite apart from the question as to 
how one or other state of things comes to be as it is in 
any one case — that with one man attention is directed 
to the movement for the best results, with another to the 
sensation or special memory image in close association 
with the movement. With the former the thought of the 
movement begins the movement. But with the other, if 
the best doing of the movement comes from thinking of 
a sensation or special image, then the movement will be 
relatively deranged, embarrassed, when the attention is 
drawn from this sensation and forced to fix itself upon 

297 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

the movement itself. These, then, are the two princi- 
ples we desiderate, and they are both natural parts of 
the " type " theory. 

So why not generalize this ? Speech cannot be con- 
sidered an exceptional function in its rise and mech- 
anism. Other complex motor functions show the 
same kinds or types of execution: handwriting, music- 
performing, etc. 1 The hand has, next possibly to the 
tongue, the most delicate, varied, and differentiated 
functions to perform; and the laws of association by 
which sensory cues, checks, controls, are affixed to hand 
actions and combinations, must be the same as those 
involved in speech. So in simple hand movements 
people must show the sensory and motor types. This is 
my hypothesis. 

The man, therefore, who gives relatively shorter 
motor reactions is a " motor " in his type ; with him 
the thought of movement is the most facile beginning 
of the movement, just because it is really the movement, 
and nothing else, that he thinks of. That is his Anlage. 
But the man who gives relatively shorter sensory (audi- 
tory, visual) reactions is a " sensory " in his type ; with 
him the attempt to think of the movement as a move- 
ment interferes with the prompt and exact execution of 
it, just because he is not accustomed to execute his 
movements in that way. That is his Anlage. But, of 
course, the two sorts of people have equal claim to 
recognition in science. Suppose a dead aphasic brought 
for autopsy to a surgeon, who inquires into the life- 
history of the man, and finding that he was of the 
sensory type, then declares that the body is not fit for 

1 See my Mental Development, pp. 91 ff., and 438 ff. In chap. xiv. 
of that work, on " The Mechanism of Revival," I have endeavored to put 
in evidence the general principles which underlie the type theory. 

298 



TYPES OF REACTION 

a scientific autopsy, because the man did not have the 
proper type of aphasia! As a matter of fact, so near 
are the disciples of Wundt to the explanation by types 
that it is only necessary to translate their word Anlage 
by "type," and then apply the connotations of that 
term in the examination of refractory cases, to brino- 
them into line. I may accordingly sum up in the words 
of my earlier article (Philos. jRev., II., 395) : 

" We have in this fact of types the explanation of the 
contradictory results reached by different investigators in 
the matter of motor reactions. Some find motor reactions 
shorter, as I have said above ; others do not. The reason 
is, probably, that in some subjects the ' sensory ' type is so 
pronounced that the attention cannot be held on the mus- 
cular reaction without giving confusion and an abortive 
result. On the other hand, some persons are so clearly 
'motor' in ordinary life, that sensory reaction is in like 
manner artificial, and its time correspondingly long. And 
yet again others may be neutral as regards sensory or motor 
preferences. If this be true, another element of ' abound- 
ing uncertainty ' is introduced into all the results of experi- 
ments so far performed in this field, as reflection on the 
matter will show." 

One or two further points, however, may be made 
which give the correct interpretation more importance 
than the simple facts in themselves really have. In the 
first place, an additional tendency seems to show itself 
when movements become very habitual — a tendency 
recognized in all discussions of the principle of habit. 
Habitual performances tend to become independent 
of consciousness, attention, thought, altogether. This 
tendency should make itself evident in reaction-time 
work, and reagents of great practice should show, (1) 

299 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

diminishing time in all reactions, and (2) diminishing 
difference between the two kinds of times, sensory and 
muscular. Further, the same tendency should show 
itself in a diminishing difference between individuals of 
different types as they both get more practice. All 
these results are, I think, clearly shown in those of the 
earlier researches in which the amount of practice is 
reported. 1 

And, again, finer distinctions of type follow from the 
general theory : such distinctions as those clearly estab- 
lished for speech. The "visual," "auditory," and pos- 
sibly (as in the blind) " touch " types of speech are all 
included under the head of sensory. As I have said, 
the speech case is a case of finer reaction-time distinc- 
tions. And the hand, as used in most reaction experi- 
ments, ought to show to a greater or less degree 'similar 
distinctions. 2 The cases so far discovered of relatively 
shorter sensory reactions seem to be, as far as reported, 
auditory (musicians) and visual (Flournoy's). To de- 
termine between " visual " and " auditory " times for 
any individual, of course the same set of reaction exper- 
iments should be made with the two classes of stimula- 
tions, each being compared with the muscular reactions 
to the same stimulus respectively. 

1 Consequently it does not do to say, with Wundt and Kiilpe, that the 
" muscular " reaction is more automatic. Of course it is so in those who 
give a shorter motor reaction — that is sufficient proof of it. But that 
the sensory time is shorter in others is sufficient proof, also, that in their 
case the sensory reaction is more automatic. Kiilpe's two-arm reaction 
experiment is subject to this criticism, among others (see Wundt, loc. cit., 
p. 325; Kiilpe's Grundriss, pp. 422 f.). 

2 A possible instance of such variation is seen in the case of Donders, 
which Wundt has difficulty with (Phys. Psych., iii., ii., p. 268). Say 
the reagent was " visual " in his type, and we have reason for his shorter 
reaction to light than to sound, while he still falls under the sensory type 
in general. 

300 



TYPES OF REACTION 

The general result follows (if this hypothesis have 
acceptance) that the reaction-time experiment becomes 
of use mainly as a method. Distinctions supposed to 
be established once for all by various researches must be 
considered as largely individual results, inasmuch as the 
authors have not reported on the type of the reagent. 
But for that very reason these results may have great 
value, as themselves indicating in each case this very 
thing, the type of one single reagent, and in so far some 
of the general characteristics of that type. What we 
now desiderate in a great many departments, as for 
example, in the treatment of school children, and in the 
diagnosis of complex mental troubles, is just some 
method of discovering the type of the individual in 
hand. If reactions vary in certain great ways, accord- 
ing to the types which they illustrate, then in reaction 
experimentation we have a great objective method of 
study. But before the method can be called in any way 
complete, there should be a detailed re-investigation of 
the whole question, with a view to the great distinctions 
of mental type already made out by the pathologists. 1 

A word should be added concerning the position of 
Professor Flournoy. The hypothesis which I have ad- 
vanced has been attributed also to Flournoy. I think 
this is a mistake, at least so far as the publications of 
Professor Flournoy are taken as evidence. His case, 
cited of the " type visuel," seems to imply the existence 
of other types, it is true ; and at the close of his second 
article he raises the question, "si la facon de r£agir 
observee chez M. Y., n'est qu'une singularity individuelle, 

1 I have earlier indicated {Med. Record, loc. cit., and Philos. Rev., loc. 
cit.), the possible use of this method by brain surgeons, an idea which 
Wallaschek comments on with approval. Certain general indications 
from reaction-times are already recognized by physicians, especially in 
investigating various anaesthesias. 

301 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

ou si elle est un fait general et constant dans le type vis- 
uel d'imagination." But what he means in the context 
by " type visuel " is not what is meant by that phrase in 
the generalized usage of the pathologists. His case is 
" visual " in the sense that the man thinks of movements 
by a visual picture of his arm, rather than by muscle-sense 
images (just what I have distinguished above as " visual 
motor" in distinction from " kinesthetic motor;" and 
the case is a good confirmation of the conclusions given 
above under that head). But it does not follow that 
the man is a " visual in the broader sense. He might 
as likely be an "auditive." The most that can be said 
of Flournoy's case, on the general doctrine of types — 
other evidence aside — is that he is " sensory " and on 
my theory his shorter sensory reaction-time proves it. 
But Flournoy makes no such general application of the 
theory of types. Indeed, in asking the question which I 
have quoted from him (i. e., whether all visuals would 
react as this man did), he shows that he does not mean 
to bring reactions generally under the type theory. For 
the real "visual" might give a shorter " visual motor" 
than " sensory " time — i. £., when the stimulus reacted 
to is other than visual (say auditory) ; since then the 
visualizing habit would throw its influence on the side of 
the motor reaction. 

In the matter of the distinction between "visual 
motor" and " kinesthetic motor" reactions, however, 
Flournoy's case clearly anticipated mine in print. 1 

1 Since revising the proofs of this article I have received a note from 
M. Flournoy in which he says : " Je suis, d'une facon generate, d'accord 
avec vous sur Tinfluence du type d'imagination " (making reference to 
my article in the Medical Record). The reader may now (1902) consult 
Professor Flournoy's exhaustive and valuable paper, Observations sur 
quelques types de reaction simple (1896). 

302 



XVIII 

THE "TYPE-THEORY" OF REACTION 1 

In the October (1895) No. of Mind, Professor Titch- 
ener devotes some pages to a very discriminating 
examination of the recent * Study " of mine in The 
Psychological Review (May, 1895), — the preceding 
paper, — in which I stated in some detail a theory to 
explain the variations shown by different reagents in the 
time of their reactions. His statement of the question 
is so full and his quotations of my statement of it so 
generous that I need not now do more than refer the 
reader to his article, or to mine, for the preliminaries. 
I may also waive a discussion as to the methods of 
science in general and the nature of proof — matters of 
a kind that we either agree upon or would probably 
continue to disagree upon. All such machinery out of 
the way, I may be allowed to state a point or two, first 
on his article, and afterwards on my own. 

1. The first point made is this : that I was wrong in 
calling the " disposition" or " Anlage " view a " theory." 
That certainly is true ; and I claim, as Professor Titch- 
ener grants my right to, that my theory goes farther, 
in attempting to give a psychological explanation of 
reaction rather than a simple statement of fact. 

2. Professor Titchener's explanations regarding what 
he calls the " Anlage " of the reagent, and the quotations 

1 From Mind, Jan. 1896, pp. 81 ff. Although somewhat polemical, this 
paper is reprinted for the sake of the explanations it gives of points in 
the preceding chapter. 

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PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

from the works of others on the same point, still seems 
to me, in spite of the " four-fold root of sufficient reason" 
which he presents in numerical order, to be open to my 
original charge of circulum in prohando. He says, first, 
that, in Lange's words, " there are certain persons who 
are incapable of reacting consistently in the sensorial or 
muscular way." This I not only admit, but expect as a 
natural circumstance, if the truth be what my theory 
says it is. The man of the sensory type, my case of F, 
for example, complained of just this difficulty : he found 
himself almost incapable of reacting in the muscular 
way, being a musician and a man of the auditory type. 
Is it better to explain this man's condition, first finding 
out about all that we can, or to drive him out of the 
laboratory ? 

Then, under the same heading, Professor Titchener 
cites Wundt's version of the same incapable man in 
these words : " there are individuals who are entirely 
incapable of any steady concentration of the attention." 
This I admit — the asylums are full of them — and 
I also admit that they are better out of the laboratory. 
But this is a very different class from those persons 
described by Lange ; and it is just the confusion of 
the two kinds of people that makes Mr. Titchener's 
position seem to me a false one. I find that my case F, 
if I am patient and do not turn him out too hastily, shows 
a remarkable power of concentration of his attention upon 
sounds ; he can beat all the laboratory besides at that. 
And in other directions his attention is very fine. He 
is, in fact, a high-stand man in his university work 
generally. So he is in no sense one of Wundt's class 
who are incapable of any steady concentration of the 
attention. On the contrary, he can concentrate his 
attention splendidly, provided we allow him to do it in 

304 



THE "TYPE-THEORY" OF REACTION 

his own way. Assuming, then, that Wundt stated just 
what he meant, I quite agree with him ; provided his 
usage go no further than his words. But coming to the 
question of usage in the Leipsic laboratory and speak- 
ing only by the book, we find the following words in 
Professor Titchener's article in Wundt's Studien. 

After saying that his results ought to be published, 
" weil die Zahlen auf einer strengen Durchflihrung des 
zwischen den sogenannten sensoriellen und muscularen 
Reactionen existierenden Unterschieds beruhen, und 
daher theils Abweichungen von den friiher erhaltenen 
Zahlen aufweisen, theils zur Erklarung der innerhalb 
dieser vorhandenen Unregelmassigkeiten dienen kon- 
nen," he goes on to report — " Mitarbeiter in diesem 
Theil der Untersuchungen sind neun Herren gewesen. 
Sichere Resultate habe ich aber nur von zweien ausser 
mir selbst gewinnen konnen." {Phil. Studien, VIII., 
s. 138.) 

Now does Mr. Titchener mean to say that but three 
only of the nine were capable of any " steady concen- 
tration of the attention " ? If not so, then where are 
the six? Are the six "incapable of introspection," as 
another of Professor Titchener's authorities is quoted 
to have put it ? I happen to know about some of the 
six, and can say that the average ability of the patrons 
of the Leipsic laboratory is not so low as this procedure 
would seem to indicate. So Professor Titchener is not 
following Wundt's formula of exclusion; he is rather 
following his own and Lange's formula, and by it ex- 
cluding those who are " incapable of reacting consistently 
in the sensorial or muscular way." If one-third of man- 
kind are to be taken to prove that a result is a universal 
principle, the rest being deliberately excluded because 
they cannot get the result that the one-third do, then 
20 305 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

what theoretical conclusions could not be proved in 
psychological laboratories ? 1 It would be interesting — 
indeed it would be the only possible justification of the 
procedure — to have the partial results which the other 
two-thirds did give, with the criticism of them on the 
ground of which they were thrown out. 

3. Mr. Titchener then says that my charge that the 
" Leipsic school ' rules out ' results which do not accord 
with the Leipsic theory, but are nevertheless constant 
and regular results, is altogether unfounded" — quoting 
passages again from Leumann and Ktilpe to the effect 
that due regard should be had to individual differences 
among reagents. The only results ruled out, he says, 
"are those which are wholly irregular and inconstant." 
To this I have two replies to make. First, I may ask: 
if this be true, why does not Mr. Titchener accept the 
results of Flournoy, Cattell, and myself, which show 
tables of cases whose reactions were as regular and 
constant as the Leipsic results, but which fail to show 
the sensorial-muscular relation which the Leipsic school 
believe in. I shall say a word more on this question 
of relative accuracy of result further on. And second, 
Professor Titchener overlooks one of the essential fac- 
tors in the case — the factor in the case, to wit, that 
relative regularity and constancy may be just the thing 
we are observing. Results may be regularly irregular : 
and that is just the contrary case to the one which he 
looks exclusively for, i. e., the case of results which are 
regularly regular. In ruling out all results which are 
irregular, the Leipsic school beg the question. In mat- 
ters of the attention it is evident that steadiness, uni- 

1 Of course I do not mean to say that Professor Titchener intention- 
ally adopts only such procedure ; but that his " principle of exclusion " 
appears to work out that sort of result. 

306 



THE "TYPE-THEORY" OF REACTION 

formity, ease of fixation, are the opposites of hesitation, 
now-good-now-bad, easy-then-difficult, efforts. And it 
is just a part of the phenomenon that my theory attempts 
to bring to recognition, that the case in reaction is 
exactly this normal kind of variation. Irregularity 
may arise, for example, from difficulty in getting the 
required image or content held up in attention. And 
I think that the Leipsic school have to recognize and act 
upon the same principle as soon as they come to ask 
for the slightest shadow of explanation of their own 
distinction between the two kinds of reaction. In short, 
to put the position briefly on this point, I should say 
that irregularity of result might occur — and we actually 
have cases of it on each side — in either kind of reac- 
tion, and if one should determine beforehand to rule 
out all cases of such irregularity of the muscular kind, 
then he might find one-third of his cases remaining to 
serve as basis of a formulation exactly the opposite of 
that held by the Leipsic school. 

I have, further, to thank Professor Titchener for quot- 
ing a passage from Kiilpe to the effect that " if a person is 
incapable of any vivid ideation of a sense impression, he 
will give the appropriate direction to his attention by 
the formation of a corresponding judgment, or by help 
of the organic sensations arising from the strain set up 
in the organ of sense or of movement, or perhaps by 
visual ideas of the stimulus or of the required movement. 
But it is probable that certain differences in the deter- 
mination of reaction times are largely referable to the 
differences in the form of expectation." This is true. 
It is only another way of saying that these things should 
be taken into account, and that all variations in indivi- 
duals should be considered. Professor Flournoy's case 
is especially valuable as enabling us to follow up one of 

307 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

the variations which Kiilpe hints at ; and my research 
into the variation between " visual motor " and " kin- 
esthetic motor " reactions is a deliberate attempt to clear 
up one of these distinctions. Kiilpe wrote in the same 
passage : " so far there has been no accurate discrimina- 
tion of all these forms of muscular and sensorial prep- 
aration." How then, I may ask, can he say beforehand 
that the muscular form will turn out in each case to be 
shorter than the sensorial ? One of the merits of the 
" type theory" is just that it gives us natural lines of ad- 
vance along which to direct these further investigations. 
4. When, therefore, Professor Titchener says that 
my " demand for a statement of the origin and meaning 
of the 'disposition' is a demand for the impossible," I 
have only to cite certain practical considerations to meet 
his view as to the intrinsic obscureness of " nurture, 
heredity, and education," so far as this topic involves 
those things. Is not the fact that F is a musician some- 
thing of an explanation of his auditive " disposition " ? 
Is not the fact that a man having certain defects of vision 
has also difficulty in giving visual attention, in so far a 
reason for his long visual reaction ? Is there not now a 
mass of pathological evidence proving that movement 
of a limb may be impossible if visual, auditory, or other 
types of attention cannot be brought into play ? And 
is not this in so far the ground of a theory of the varia- 
tions which these men show when they are well? In 
short, is not the pathological theory which I have used 
in working out the " type- theory " of reaction just a 
theory of the variations produced by " nurture, heredity, 
and education " ? But even if " dispositions " are 
theoretically obscure, we should be sure that we have 
u caught the rabbit " before saying that he is not worth 
cooking; and this is the task which the "type-theory " 

308 



THE "TYPE-THEORY" OF REACTION 

sets itself, — to investigate the so-called " dispositions " 
and find out what they really are. 

Professor Titchener then goes on to examine the evi- 
dence upon which my theory rests. I may say before 
taking up the points which he makes, that I by no means 
admit the implication that I have anywhere stated all the 
evidence in what I may call the form of a catalogue, — 
as he is fond of doing ; on the contrary, the article he 
quotes is mainly the report of a research, and the general 
considerations are very schematic. I hope later to do 
more justice to the evidence as a whole. 1 So I shall now 
only comment on the evidence as he states it, not as I 
should state it. 

1. He objects to my cases on the ground that they 
were not tested as to their type. Now, in spite of Mr. 
Titchener's assertion that " there are many methods of 
testing types," I may say that I do not know of any that 
are conclusive except those of introspection and pathol- 
ogy. I believe that in most cases a very safe conclusion 
can be reached by questioning the subject in a variety 
of ways, i. e., by using the method of introspection. 
This I have done with my cases, and it is only a phase 
of the incompleteness of my article, when looked at from 
a " catalogue " point of view, that I did not state it. 
Professor Titchener is quite right in asking for it ; and 
later I shall furnish it. He would do psychology a 
service, however, if he would publish some of the 
" many methods of testing type, apart from the reaction 
method." 2 

2. He says of my results : " four persons reacted to 

1 See at the end of this paper an abstract of a fuller discussion and 
research, which still remains unpublished. 

2 Cf. Professor Titchener's further reply on this point (and others as 
well) in Mind, 1896, pp. 236 f. 

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PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

sound. Two of them, B and S, carried out the investi- 
gation of which the present i Study ' is a report : presum- 
ably, therefore, they had the type theory in mind 
throughout. Whether the other two reacted with or 
without knowledge, we are not told. The greatest 
reliance is placed upon the times of B and S." Of this 
I have again two things to say : first, that the research 
was carried out largely in Toronto at the time when I 
(B) still accepted the Leipsic distinction as a general 
one ; and my present theory was arrived at only after I 
had subsequently secured the results reported in the 
table of F, and largely on the basis of that table, which 
forced me to alter my former view. This shows for 
itself in the tables, in both my case and that of S — he 
too had no such theory when he gave the reactions — 
for we are the very two who do not contradict the sen- 
sorial-muscular distinction ! What Mr. Titchener means 
by saying " the greatest reliance is placed upon the times 
of B and S " passes my comprehension, — as also any 
ground he may have for the unhandsome charge that I 
have changed my reaction-times since I wrote my book 
on Senses and Intellect. It looks to me like a case either 
of the extremest carelessness as to self-contradiction, or 
of " bluff ! " Of course I do not accuse him of the latter : 
but why strain to make a point which is contradicted by 
the table which he himself constructs out of mine ? It 
can only deceive the non-elect. My results still show 
the Leipsic distinction as they always did ; so do Mr. 
Shaw's (S). Mine have only changed in that the dis- 
tinction is less marked than it used to be ; and this I go 
to the trouble to explain in the same article as probably 
due to habit and practice, — as my theory again seems 
at least not to contradict. The times of B and S, there- 
fore, are very neutral to the discussion ; that of F and, so 

310 



THE "TYPE-THEORY" OF REACTION 

far as examined, that of T, are the ones on which " great- 
est reliance " is placed, — of those which I have myself 
investigated. 

3. Now, as to accuracy of result, — the point which 
comes up next. Professor Titchener criticises my tables 
as to certain results which show variation, quoting only 
the figures for B and S. " These variations," says he, 
"call for special explanation." So they do; and I can 
give it. But, as I have said, these are the two cases 
which have no great bearing on the discussion. The two 
cases which are important to my argument and which 
go with those of other observers to prove the "type- 
theory " are those of S and C, as I may again repeat. In 
the case of F the difference between the sensorial and 
muscular reactions is 40 a and in that of C it is 25 <r. Is 
it competent argumentation, in view of these figures, to 
say : " Professor Baldwin argues from time-differences 
(22, 18, 21 o-)," with no shadow of reference to the other 
cases, especially after declaring, with great inaccuracy, 
that I placed " greatest reliance upon the times of B and 
S." The only possible point in my article to which such 
criticism would apply is the distinction between " visual 
motor" and " kinesthetic motor" reactions, where I do 
use the results of B and S. But this is quite another 
topic ; and while to have confused the two may, in a 
measure, excuse Professor Titchener's error, it is, I am 
bound to say, most unfortunate. For in that case, how 
can Professor Titchener go on to say: u Nevertheless it 
must be admitted that the tables show some striking re- 
sults, and that the construction of the type-theory out of 
them is very ingenious " ? This would seem to show 
that the writer of the sentence did apprehend the bear- 
ing of the times of F and C. 

4. Flournoy's case. Professor Titchener gives the 

311 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

details of this case sufficiently. He dismisses it with 
these words : " All that they [i. e., the Leipsic school] 
would say is that the ' physical possibility ' to react is 
not, in [our] laboratory experience, a feature of the nor- 
mal or average mental constitution. Consequently, the 
mind so constituted cannot be drawn upon to furnish 
norms of reaction : however interesting its workings 
may be in other connections." This summary exclusion 
of cases has been spoken of above. So far from dispos- 
ing of the case, it shows, in my mind, the plainest con- 
fession of inability to do anything with it. It amounts 
to saying : " This case was investigated ; it ought not to 
have been investigated : the results were published ; they 
ought not to have been published." Other cases are 
then taken up, i. <?., those of Professor Cattell, from whom 
a letter is cited quoting his two reagents J and D. Cattell 
says that D supports the type-theory, and that J gives 
no difference between the two kinds of reaction, — a fact 
which, of course, fails to support the Leipsic distinction. 
Professor Cattell then gives a case (unpublished) of a 
reagent who gave a slower reaction for sound than for 
light while distracted " by not knowing where the sound 
was." When this cause of distraction was removed " his 
reaction (to sound) became much quicker and more 
regular." Cattell says: this case " supports your [Titch- 
ener's] point of view ; " and Professor Titchener on this 
common phenomenon of distraction of attention, dis- 
misses the evidence of Professor CattelPs cases with the 
phrase " honours are divided." Professor Cattell, on 
the other hand, in the same letter makes the following 
explicit declaration : " My own idea is that an unusual 
direction of the attention lengthens the reaction time, 
and that when the reaction has been much practised 
it becomes reflex." If Professor Titchener can get any 

312 



THE "TYPE-THEORY" OF REACTION 

comfort from the unpublished case mentioned, it is 
well, but to me it seems to be quite easy of explanation. 
The person is uncertain what he is to attend to in certain 
respects, and so cannot attend quickly or well ; as soon, 
however, as this cause of uncertainty is removed, he can. 
There is no question here as between types of attention ; 
it is rather a question of good attention and bad atten- 
tion. And the result is what the type-theory anticipates : 
with the attention bad the reaction was long ; with the 
attention good it was short. The case is too meagre 
to be of any value except as a tendency case, — were it 
not that Professor Titchener uses it again below, forget- 
ting all the proper demands made earlier in his paper 
for exact figures. As to the Donders case, — it is pure 
surmise one way and the other ; I cited it in my other 
paper only as showing the length that the Leipsic school 
are willing to go with their distinctions. 

As to additional cases from which the author says I 
do not claim support, it is equally true that I make no 
reference to them, again not writing a " catalogue " : 
the main reason that I did not u claim " certain other 
cases reported in the literature of the topic was that I 
thought the cases cited were sufficient. 

So much, then, for the " evidence of the type-theory." 
I think that it is strengthened by Mr. Titchener's ex- 
amination of it. And there is, besides, the great mass 
of evidence drawn from the pathology of the motor 
functions, and from the general principles of habit and 
relative accommodation of the attention, which are 
stated at some length in my article. All this field is 
untouched by the examination of the critic, although 
it is upon those things that — apart from the actual 
cases reported — I lay "greatest reliance." 

But Mr. Titchener is not yet done : he next cites 

313 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

" evidence against the type-theory." And what he cites 
he himself describes as " these two negative instances " 
— i. e., of himself, and of Binet's case of M. Inaudi. As 
to Professor Titchener's case, as he reports it from his 
impressions of his own mental life, he simply shows, 
with quotations from my book of Mental Development 
also in support of it, that type differs in the same 
individual for different functions., and "shifts" with 
education for the same function. Both of these points 
I admit ; and I have put both of them in evidence in 
the book quoted: but how do they bear against the 
type-theory of reaction ? They do not. The reason it 
is a type-theory is just that it allows for such variations ; 
and it matters not whether the variation, in any case, be 
in a person or in a function. Indeed the ground of 
origin of types is to be found in part in education, 
which must necessarily apply to single functions. But 
I do not think that the little practice that one may give 
himself in a year or two, or in the case of one function 
or two, is likely to alter the general type of his reactions. 
This is all that Professor Titchener's case shows, and 
even then are we not taking very general statements for 
figures ? Why has not Professor Titchener tested him- 
self by some of those " many methods " ? He seems to 
forget those "many methods" when he now says : " The 
elucidation of a memory type is by no means an easy 
matter." 

The case of M. Inaudi is to my mind not avail- 
able. Inaudi is a prodigy of mathematics, investigated 
by M. Binet and found to be very dependent upon 
hearing in his calculations. Professor Titchener draws 
the inference, and it seems that Binet did also, that he 
should give a remarkably short auditory reaction com- 
pared with his other sensorial times. This he did not, 

314 



THE "TYPE-THEORY" OF REACTION 

when investigated; and so he is now cited as evidence 
against my theory. Of course I reply, as Mr. Titchener 
supposed I should, that this does not show anything 
about his muscular reaction. And further it is quite 
too abnormal a case to show anything about the relation 
of the different kinds of sensory reactions to one another. 
This arithmetical work on the part of such prodigies is 
not to be accounted for as due to habit, practice, training 
of the attention, etc., the usual ground of type distinc- 
tions ; it is rather a variation of an obscure kind, some 
sort of twist of which we know really nothing, and in 
it Mr. Titchener ought to recognize a peculiar Anlage 
if there ever was one, and promptly rule it out of the 
laboratory. I quite agree with M. Binet in saying in 
the passage which Mr. Titchener quotes : " It must not 
be supposed that M. Inaudi is an auditive outside his 
professional exercises in calculation. He is an auditive 
for calculation, i, e., for one partial, special, sharply de- 
fined memory." It seems to me quite likely — if this 
freaky calculating gift be amenable to any rules — that 
for this function his muscular reaction would be longer 
than the sensory. But for his other senses it seems to 
me also probable that he was reacting all the time in 
a muscular way. And even though M. Inaudi gave all 
his reactions with muscular attention, as Professor Tit- 
chener supposes, how does that in any way " tell heavily 
against the type-theory"? That theory does not say 
that no one shall react in that way if he wants to. In 
that case one would only have to suppose that Inaudi's 
reactions of the two kinds to sound were about equal 
and both very short. This is supported by the lack of 
conclusive evidence that he was much more auditive 
than motor, even in his calculating. 

After all this rather tiring discussion, in which there 

315 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

is on both sides too much hair-splitting, hypothetical 
interpretation of cases, and conjecture as to what a 
reagent " ought" to do on this view or on that, I find 
relief in turning to one or two of the larger bearings of 
the subject. This may be taken to be a further state- 
ment of aspects of the general position now sufficiently 
well characterized by the phase "type-theory." At the 
same time, I desire to thank Professor Titchener for the 
careful consideration he has given to my point of view. 
1. It is not a necessary corollary from the type-theory 
that a subject be of the same type in his reactions with 
the hands to sounds, sights, etc., that he is in his speech. 
I think, as I said in my earlier article, that this is of tener 
so than not ; and it was this thought that first led me to 
look to the general doctrine of types for an explanation 
of the variations in different persons' times. We find 
that speech itself may vary in its type very remarkably 
in the same individual from one language to another, 
especially when the conditions of learning have been 
fairly consistent and of long duration. The case de- 
scribed by Ballet, and my own case of relative contrast 
in type as between my use of French and German, 1 are 
instances of this. And the pathological instances of 
damage to the brain which incapacitates the patient 
from using one language while another may remain 
intact — together with many interesting minor varia- 
tions — tend to furnish evidence in the same direction. 
It should not surprise us, therefore, if it should finally 
become evident that a hand-function, such, say, as hand- 
writing, in airy individual, was most readily stimulated 
by some other centre in the brain than that which serves 
for the " cue " to speech. I am concerned to say this here 

1 See my Mental Development, pp. 435, 461 note. Ballet's case is to be 
found in his Le langage inter ieur, p. 62. 

316 



THE "TYPE-THEORY" OF REACTION 

since in the article cited Professor Titchener holds me 
somewhat strictly to the complete parallelism between 
speech, on the one hand, and hand-functions on the 
other, interpreting my statement that way — with some 
right to, certainly, from the partial statements of my 
earlier papers. 

2. An important requirement, which Professor Titch- 
ener has not brought up against the type-theory, is 
yet to be fulfilled ; and I hope to go into the considera- 
tion of it and the point mentioned immediately above 
when I publish the further experimental results which 
are accumulating in my laboratory. The requirement 
is this : should not any theory of the variations in the 
relative lengths of the two sorts of reaction in different 
individuals give some kind of an account of the great 
disproportion between the number of cases which give 
a shorter muscular, as against those which give a shorter 
sensorial, reaction time ? Professor Titchener may find 
it difficult to form such a requirement, since it would 
seem to commit him to the recognition of normal instances 
of the latter. But those of us who believe in testing 
everybody, and in making the differences themselves 
fruitful data for theory, are bound to recognize the dis- 
proportion spoken of, although, for myself, I think when 
more laboratory workers take persons just as they come, 
the relative numbers will probably be more evenly 
adjusted. 

Yet so far as this disproportion does exist, as it appears 
to, I think it really bears out the analogy of reactions 
generally with speech. The discussions recently pub- 
lished on so-called "internal speech" turn, it will be 
remembered, not on the question as to whether there 
are the same number of cases of persons sensory as 
motor in their speech, but rather on the question 

317 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

whether all men are. not motor. As I have put the 
question elsewhere, for convenience in grouping the 
evidence pro and con, "are the kinesthetic memory 
centres intrinsic to speech" or not? 1 There is a 
school of physiologists and psychologists, represented 
by Strieker of Vienna, who go so far as to deny that 
any person can speak without the incipient stimulation 
of the motor organs involved. They seem to me to be 
for that discussion about in the position that the Leipsic 
people are for the discussion of reaction. And wdiile the 
case for speech seems to be going clearly against them 
on pathological grounds, yet they have by far the larger 
number of cases. The literature seems to show a great 
disproportion of cases in favor of the motor aphasias : 
and that fact has seemed to keep back the recognition 
of the sensory cases. Those who are familiar with the 
literature of aphasia will, I think, agree that the type- 
theory has had this disproportion to contend with also 
there. So, while I may not stop to make good the in- 
dications now noted of the state of the facts in regard 
to aphasia, perhaps sufficient has been said to show that, 
far from being a difficulty to the type-theory of reaction 
that the disproportion of cases is as it is, it rather seems 
to extend and strengthen the analogy with the mechan- 
ism of speech. 

P. S. Since writing and despatching the article 
above, I have received a letter from Professor James 
R. Angell of the University of Chicago which promises 
further experimental confirmation of the type-theory. 
He says, under date of Nov. 9, 1895 : " It may interest 
you, in connection with Titchener's criticism of your 
theory of reaction-time peculiarities, to know that the 

1 Philosophical Review, July, 1893, p. 386, incorporated in Mental Devel- 
opment, chap. xiv. 318 



THE "TYPE-THEORY" OF REACTION 

very time your article appeared, I had all ready a con- 
siderable body of experiments remarkably similar to 
yours, from which I had drawn conclusions absurdly 
like your own. I decided to postpone publishing until 
I could supplement them with more detailed work. 
I hope to get the thing into print before long. It 
seems to substantiate entirely the general principle un- 
derlying your view, although introducing some minor 
modifications." 

Professor Angell's paper appeared in The Psychologi- 
cal Review, May, 1896. 

The following paragraph is an abstract from the Proc. 
Amer. Psych. Assoc, printed in The Psychological Review, 
March, 1898, p. 165. It reports further experimental 
results. 

" A Research on ' Type Variations in Reaction Times.'' 1 
This paper takes up two problems : (1) To ascertain how 
far the indications of mental type secured by differences in 
simple reaction time, as between ' sensory ' and ' muscular ' 
reaction, agree with the results of introspective determina- 
tion of mental type (independently carried out on the same 
subjects). (2) To determine whether the differences be- 
tween i sensory' and ' muscular' reactions for the hand, to 
various stimulations, are of the same sort as the correspond- 
ing differences for speech in the same subjects. Many series 
of experiments were made on each of four subjects with the 
following general results. In each of the subjects both the 
correspondences suggested above were found to hold: the 
most striking case being that of Mr. J. F. Crawford, whose 
simple sensory reaction to sound and light is very much 
shorter than his muscular reaction, for both hand and mouth 
reactions * and whose mental type, as independently deter- 

1 A cut showing a new form of mouth-key was shown ; it is figured in 
the Intermediare des Biologistes, March 5, 1898. 

319 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

rained by various introspective tests, is unmistakably audi- 
tory. In two of the subjects the agreement between hand 
and mouth reaction is negative ; namely, there is no differ- 
ence between sensory and muscular reactions for either 
function ; and in these persons the same condition is re- 
flected in their great difficulty in securing clear introspec- 
tive indications of type. In the fourth case the subject 
finds himself visual in his type, and his reactions show 
sensory times slightly shorter than the muscular in both 
hand and mouth functions. It is remarkable that in these 
four subjects — three never having been tested before, and 
the fourth only slightly — there is no instance of muscular 
reaction shorter than sensory for either hand or mouth 
to either sound or light. The author considers the results 
as supplying important evidence of the truth of the type- 
theory of reaction. Full details of the investigation are to 
be published in an early issue of The Psychological Review." 



320 



XIX 

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION * 

I. Historical 

The psychology of religion has not had due attention. 
The views which make religion essentially non-natural 
have either, on the one hand, regarded man as naturally 
unreligious or irreligious, or have, on the other hand, cut 
the psychological cloth to suit a theological pattern. The 
positive views current on the subject may be put under 
certain headings. 

(1) The Religious Instinct view. This finds in the 
religious motive an innate " instinct," predisposition, or 
propensity. This, like all theories which rest on native 
endowment, closes the door to analysis, and, moreover, 
find justification for constructing this assumed " instinct " 
in the way which their respective religious or theological 
theories demand. 

(2) The Intuition view and the Intellectualists. The 
view that the idea of God is an intuition is associated 
with the " instinct " view in finding something native 
and irreducible upon which to rest the justification of 
positive religion ; it differs, however, from it in allowing 
an indefinite development of argumentation in support 
of the intuition. In this characteristic the intuition 
view lays emphasis upon the theistic " proofs," and con- 

1 Cf. the writer's Diet, of Philosophy and Psychology, art. " Religion " 
(psychology of). Lecture before the Princeton Philosophical Seminary, 
March 7, 1902. 

21 321 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

siders the religious state to be largely "belief" based 
upon argument, or " faith " based upon authority, rest- 
ing alike in formulations concerning the divine being, 
or upon direct revelation . Natural religion, or theology, 
and deistic teleology were developed either with aid from 
certain sacred books or by "natural reason." This 
view, in which intellectual factors predominated, charac- 
terized ecclesiastical, mediaeval, and pre-Kantian thought 
generally. The completed intuition position arose as a 
restatement of intellectual ism in view of the destructive 
criticism of Kant ; the intuition of God was Kant's " idea 
of God," considered not as a formal principle of theo- 
retical reason, but, like the intuitions generally, as an 
immediate deliverance of consciousness, having objective 
validity. The Scottish philosophers, who were psycho- 
logical in their presu|)positions, attempted to work out a 
psychology of the intuitions, and in so doing led up to 
a religious psychology, properly so-called. 

(3) The Analytic and " Critical " point of view. This 
consists in an analysis, or at least an attempt at direct 
examination, of the developed religious sentiment. It is 
this which yielded the best psychological results up to 
the beginning of the late psychological movement called 
below " genetic." Ifc is here that the classical views of 
Kant, Schleiermacher, Matthew Arnold, and others be- 
long, — views which were permanent contributions to 
the subject because they rested upon real psychological 
facts. The two first-mentioned may be taken as repre- 
sentative of (a) the rational and (b) the emotional views 
respectively. 

(a) With Kant the central fact of religion is the idea 
of God, which is a regulative principle of the practical 
reason. The religious and the moral life stand together 
upon this postulate. Religion is recognition of God and 

322 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION 

reverence for Him. This places the emphasis on reason, 
but reason as regulative of the life of practice. And 
furthermore, reason ( Vernunff) is not intelligence ( Ver- 
stand) ; and Kant's view of religion is therefore rational, 
not intellectual. He refutes the strictly intellectual 
view by his famous criticism of the arguments for the 
existence of God, and also by his failure to find that, 
even as a principle of pure or theoretical reason, the 
idea of God is ontologically valid. Furthermore, with 
Kant religion is not an independent problem, and 
much less is the psychology of it; it enters into the 
philosophical or epistemological problem, inasmuch as 
the idea of God claims for itself theoretical and practi- 
cal universality, and so comes into the sphere of the 
dialectic of pure and practical reason. Yet, as in many 
other problems into which both psychological and epis- 
temological factors enter, Kant's work is of the first 
importance, both as leading to the intuition view in the 
way mentioned above, and also, and more especially, in 
making necessary a reconstruction in which psycho- 
logical facts should lead the way. This had not been 
possible so long as dogmatic theology with its logical 
argumentation, as crystallized in the " proofs," remained 
uncriticised. 

(£>) The school of Schleiermacher — called above emo- 
tionalists — went further than Kant in denying to reli- 
gion any sphere having separate intellectual content. 
The healing of the breach between Verstand and Ver- 
nwnft, together with the reconciliation of pure and prac- 
tical reason in the post-Kantian Identity Philosophy, 
left no dualism anywhere — no chasm on the right bank 
of which religion might perch and find its view directed 
backwards upon the secular or experiential fields of 
knowledge and faith. This made it necessary to find in 

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PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

religion some form of psychological reaction upon the 
one universal object, the Absolute, implicit in knowl- 
edge. This reaction is emotional, taking form in two 
phases of sentiment which give character to religious 
experience and furnish its criteria. These are "feel- 
ing of dependence" upon God, the object of worship, 
and " feeling of mystery," awe, reverence towards Him. 

The work of this school has the advantage, from the 
psychological point of view, of pointing out definite 
psychological experiences as necessary to religion — 
a thing which the intellectualists found it impossible 
to do, seeing that the idea of God, whether content 
or intuition, is universal and, in so far, undefinable ; 
it is essentially a universal of all experience. This led 
the way to — or at least was quite consistent with it 
— the positive or scientific investigation which is now 
of the first importance, and which in its two-fold form 
may be called " genetic." 

(4) Genetic or Scientific Research by the historical 
and evolution methods. This has taken on two great 
forms, respectively named anthropological and psy- 
chological. It deals with the origin and development 
of religion, and may therefore be distinguished as 
" genetic." 

(a) The Anthropogenetic view. The treatment of 
religion as illustrating historical evolution is now yield- 
ing most important results. 1 As to the anthropological 
problem, we may note (1) that this study, by recognizing 
the essentially religious nature of primitive rites and cults, 
confirms the view that no one form of intellectual con- 
tent — no one " idea " as such — is necessary to religion. 
Rather what is common to " low " and " high " religions 

1 The reader may consult the articles on the Evolution and Philosophy 
of " Religion," written by other hands, in the Dictionary of Philosophy. 

324 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION 

alike is certain active and emotional attitudes which ideas 
of various objects may call forth. Yet only such objects as 
do call these attitudes forth are religious, and this throws 
the actual criterion on the side of emotion and action. 
Here anthropology confirms the " emotional " view (ef. b 
below). 

(2) The objects of religious veneration, therefore, 
have an emotionally symbolic value. The gods are not 
experienced objects; they are termini for dependence, 
faith, reverence, awe, etc. Their value is necessarily 
pitched higher as man develops and reduces much of 
his experience to objective changes obeying law. The 
God is ever the something behind the cloud, the some- 
one behind nature — the someone who breaks law and 
works his will for his own, for ours, for a priest's, for a 
redeemer's sake. And cults, religious institutions, cere- 
monials, sacrifices, etc., are attempts to cope with this 
unexperienced higher something ; to bring into experi- 
ence for satisfaction, help, salvation, that which cannot 
be known to sense or opened to knowledge. 

(3) This, then, it becomes evident, raises a question 
which psycholog}^ alone can answer : why this constant 
drift, this groping beyond sense and thought, this 
demand — recurring in this form and that at every 
stage of more culture and of less culture — for a more- 
than-I, a being beyond, a God? This is the question of 
the impulse, propensity, spring of action which religion 
involves ; and we come back to psychology, and indeed 
to the instinct view, in case we find no further analysis 
possible. 

(4) In later investigations, moreover, the fact is con- 
stantly recognized that religion is a social phenomenon. 
No man is religious by himself, nor does he choose his 
God, nor devise his offering, nor enjoy his blessing alone. 

325 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

The whole is most intimately associated with social con- 
vention, custom, law — nay, often it is these, and about 
the whole of these. The priest is ruler, lawgiver, medi- 
cine man, no less than agent and embodiment of the 
divine afflatus. Religious sanctions often dictate social 
and ethical sanctions, though this dependence at later 
stages of culture may be reversed. 1 

(5) The object of religion has personal form, what- 
ever that may mean at the stage of evolution reached by 
a people. This is one of the facts earliest observed, and 
perhaps the one most universally admitted by anthropol- 
ogists. The theories of Animism, Ghost and Ancestor 
Worship, religious Personification and Ejection, all recog- 
nize and aim to formulate this class of phenomena. 

(b) The Psychogenetic view. Here finally the ap- 
peal is made directly to psychological investigation ; and 
having taken account of anthropological researches as 
showing actual religious products embodied in insti- 
tutions, the psychologist comes to his investigation with 
the checks and controls afforded by so much historical 
knowledge. This narrows his quest ; for if religion is 
an active and emotional experience, a social experience, 
and also an evolutional or racial product, in these we 
have guiding threads of importance. Then, as to the ob- 
ject, it follows from the historical facts that the object of 
religion is a symbol, a meaning or intent, not a content ; 
it may preserve its meaning while changing its content. 
What genetic notion fulfils this condition? Again, 
how can this object take on a series of quasi-perso?ial 

1 This is recognized as a safe result by the writers of the articles on 
philosophy and evolution of religion already referred to. The readers may 
consult the writer's treatment of the religious sanction, as related to other 
forms of sanction, in the volume Social and Ethical Interpretations, chaps, 
viii., x. See also the further remarks below, iii. 

326 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION 

forms, which involve social relationships ? This also 
restricts and aids the psychological determination. 

II. Psychological 

The strictly psychological problem considered as meet- 
ing these requirements falls apart into two : we ask for 
an account (1) of the unity of religious experience, and 
(2) of the variety of religious experience. The ques- 
tion of unity is that of the one religious spring of action 
common to all religions and normal to all individuals. 
The second question is as to how this common impulse 
or motive takes the forms shown in different religions 
(comparative religion), in the genetic stages in the his- 
tory of culture (evolution of religion), and in religious 
individuals (the psychology of prophets, religious seers, 
founders of: sects, the inspired, the genius, etc.) The 
latter constitutes a variational psychology of religion, 
and can proceed only on the basis of the determination 
of the normal religious impulse, although by collecting 
data it may aid the former, as do variational statistics in 
other branches of inquiry. Very little has been done 
under this latter head (<?/*., however, James, The Variety 
of Religious Experience, Edinburgh Gifford Lectures, 
already delivered but not yet published). 

In dealing with the unity of religious experience, the 
indications derived from anthropology may serve to 
guide us. They make it necessary to say, first, that reli- 
gious sentiment always involves three factors : (1) the 
recognition of other persons as standing in the same 
relation to the object of worship as one's self, i. e., religion 
is a public thing involving duties and rights as between 
fellow men (the social factor) ; (2) the recognition of 
the religious object as also a person of the same sort 

327 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

as one's fellow man and one's self, though of higher 
character (the personifying factor) ; (3) the progressive 
reinterpretation of both the foregoing factors as the 
genetic development of the thought of personality pro- 
ceeds (the genetic personal factor). 

These factors, taken separately, present problems hav- 
ing certain analogies in the psychology of the active life. 
The social factor presents substantially the same prob- 
lem as that of sympathy, notably ethical sympathy : 
how do I recognize another as standing in the relation 
of duties and right to myself, both being under a Com- 
mon law ? Here the new theory of " ejection " is availa- 
ble ; ego and alter are one thought by the reading into 
what is not-I of experience analogous to my own. The 
second or personifying factor also involves ''ejection;" 
yet here the reading-in is of the higher self — the law- 
abiding general or ethical self — which the private self- 
thought does not exhaust. God is a higher, a perfect 
self, having what the present writer has called " pro- 
jective " elements. 1 The third problem is that of the 
genetic development of the personal self-thought to ever 
higher levels, from the organic to the impulsive, from 
impulse to intelligence, from intelligence to reflection: 
a development which carries with it the necessary re- 
construction of the "other" person, and also of the 
God-person, since it gives them its own character and 
content, by the process of " ejection." This, then, makes 
religion a function of the personal development which is 
also social ; and an adequate theory of the rise of per- 
sonal self-consciousness accounts ipso facto also for the 
religious life. The impulse to read self into others, 
i. e., to recognize personality as more than individual, 
with its final development in the recognition of ideal 

1 Above, pp. 190 ff. 

328 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION 

personality — this is what, in my opinion, a genetic 
account of religion requires. 

Religious sentiment, then, falls generically in the class 
called personal sentiments — emotional dispositions aris- 
ing about the thought of personality, ethical sentiment 
being also in this class. It remains, then, to determine 
the specific character of this sentiment, the marks which 
distinguish it from others of its class. 

Here the determinations of the analytic and "emo- 
tional" schools are of extreme value. The "feeling of 
dependence " and the feeling of " awe or reverence " are 
alike the results of analysis and the direct inference from 
religious ceremonial and rite. The gods are propitiated 
to secure their favor and to mitigate or appease their 
wrath — both motives of dependence. They are served 
and worshipped with rites which are mystical, magical, 
and symbolic — evidence in turn of the essential feeling of 
mystic awe with which they are approached. These two 
sentiments, therefore, stand out as by general agreement 
common and universal. They would seem, therefore, 
to give peculiar quality and coefficient to the religious 
state of mind; and they follow also from two lines of 
inquiry, both of which yield psychological confirmation 
of the main result so far attained. 

(a) The act of ejection whereby the self is read 
into another has a twofold character : so far as it is of 
elements completely understood and experienced, the 
" other " — in this case, God — is taken to have certain 
definite attributes. And these attributes, belonging to 
an infinite or very great personality, may be invoked 
for favour, or denied with loss. So, just as we "de- 
pend " on other persons who are situated to aid or 
damage us — the parent, the patron, the great friend — 
so, though to a fuller degree, we feel dependence on the 

329 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

Great Person of our faith. But ejection involves more 
than this. We find that our personal growth is one not 
merely of " reading-in " into others, but of appropriation, 
of " reading-in " into one's self. We constantly grow by 
imitative interpretation of the acts, habits, states of 
others. There is thus a give-and-take — a " dialectic " — 
of an ejective kind going on. Not only are there ele- 
ments in the other person which we understand and 
intelligently anticipate with our feeling of dependence, 
but there grows up a habit of mind which anticipates 
the unknown, the not-yet-learned, elements of character 
of those from whom we learn. This we are not able 
to characterize in advance ; it is mysterious, awful. 
The sense of awe arises in the presence of the 
greater personality. This is therefore the origin of 
that aspect of religious emotion known as reverence 
or awe. 

(5) The study of the actual rise of personal self- 
consciousness in the child adds striking confirmation, 
in the opinion of the writer, to these determinations. 
The genetic stages of the religious emotions are seen 
rising about the consciousness of self. And the con- 
sciousness of self grows up by the "dialectic of personal 
growth" thus briefly indicated. Self is a social out- 
come, and with it religion, which is a function of this 
growth, is a social phenomenon as well. 1 

As to the varieties of religious experience, certain 
indications legitimately follow. The unity of religious 
experience is the unity of normal self -consciousness ; the 
varieties of religious experience indicate or flow from 
variations of self-consciousness. This point might be 
carried out in great detail. The alterations of self on 

1 Cf. for the detailed carrying out of these positions, the writer's Social 
and Eth. Interpret. 

330 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION 

the side of depression show themselves in all sorts of 
religious pessimism, melancholy, dejection, with corre- 
sponding sense of depression, conviction of sin, physical 
and moral laceration, and asceticism. The exaltation 
of self, on the other hand, embodies itself in proph- 
ecy, religious optimism, forms of personal alliance with 
God, inspiration, visions, religious pride, and sinlessness. 
These are merely opposing categories, not exact descrip- 
tions ; and only the subtleties of change which personal 
self-consciousness undergoes in its variations or in nor- 
mal temperamental varieties can serve as basis for tracing 
the actual varieties of religious sentiment and life. But 
the connection between the two is beyond dispute. 
Witness also the forms of so-called " religious mania," 
and other mental aberrations, of which striking reli- 
gious experience is a main symptom, and note the 
presence therein of marked alterations of self-conscious- 
ness. It is a new religious personality which has the 
new revelation, inspiration, commission of vengeance, or 
other part to play, and it is in the structure of his con- 
sciousness of self that the reason of it is to be sought. 

III. Sociological 

When we come to enquire, from an objective or soci- 
ological point of view, into the actual relation to each 
other of the phases of religion covered by the phrase 
"unity and variety of religious experience," certain 
interesting questions emerge. The problem of the place 
of religion in social evolution involves the determination 
of the role of what is essential to religion — that which 
constitutes the unity of religion — in human history. 1 

1 The question as to what is due to varieties in religion — religious per- 
sonalities, sects, cults, etc., as such, I am not now taking up. The role of 

331 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

The positions taken above, as to the psychological 
factors of religion, warrant, I think, certain statements 
which are set forth below and which in part repeat and 
in part supplement the views developed in the work 
referred to. 

First, the same movement in the idealization of per- 
sonality which leads to the postulation of a deity, also 
produces the social, ethical, and other judgments by 
which the deity is given positive form; that is, the 
attributes of the deity at any stage of religious develop- 
ment are drawn from the thought of ideal personality. 
Consequently the causal, teleological, and ethical deter- 
minations of the social group are reflected in its religious 
thought. Religion is the embodiment on the part of 
society of the highest personality. This leads, second, 
to the view that religious truth, understanding by it all 
the meaning of religion in any of its aspects, can not 
rise higher than the determination of personality made 
by the group — their ethical, social, intellectual judg- 
ment must exhaust their religion. A savage people 
will have a savage religion, and their religion will reflect 
the degree of their savagery. If cause and effect is 
thought of in terms of rude magic, if the ethical code is 
one of private revenge, sexual licence, the heroism of 
brute courage, all these things will characterize the 
religious cult and become embodied in the religious 
institutions, formulations, and traditions of such a com- 
munity. Third, this makes religion a conservative, not 
a progressive factor in social evolution ; and this, I take 
it, is its main social function. Seeing that religion in 
its growth follows step by step upon the growth of per- 
sonal consciousness and that no new religious thought can 

the great man, here as elsewhere, is important in the theory of history; 
that of the religious genius is in some respects peculiar. 

332 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION 

prevail until the higher thinking of individuals towards 
it is generalized in a public and socially adoptible form 
— by which indeed much of its novelty and progressive 
character is generally lost — it follows that religious form- 
ulations always lag behind the best intuitions of the 
best minds. Such individuals often make private in- 
terpretations of religious formulations to satisfy them- 
selves. The popular understanding of religious theorems 
is never the truest nor the most ethical. The fact that 
religion is, in its nature, a public thing and is as such 
mainly conservative, has many illustrations in the his- 
tory of mankind. Religious conservatism has been the 
cloak of religious fanaticism, the justification of persecu- 
tions, the reason for the " warfare of science and religion " 
throughout all human history. There are certain more 
special reasons for this — all, however, phases of the general 
truth now set forth — which it may be well to indicate. 
Religion has, by natural right, the sanction of 
supernatural authority. The deity it is who, by the 
rise of the religious sentiment itself, is thought in the 
religious categories at any time in force. Religious 
institutions are his home ; they embody his worship ; 
doctrines are truths of and about him ; injunctions and 
prescriptions of religion are not only socially and ethi- 
cally sanctioned, but also supernaturally. The ideal 
person is infinite in all his attributes. Again, the same 
appears from the side of the aspect of religious senti- 
ment called reverence or awe. If there be in the reli- 
gious personality an undiscovered something, unknow- 
able, awful, which is hidden behind the cloud, in this 
aspect, also, that of the mysterious, religious emotion is 
pitched at the same high supernatural level. Witness 
the "burning bush," the revelation only of the hinder 
parts, the mysteries of the Shechinah — all glimpses of 

333 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

what transcends the known and presents to the wor- 
shipper what is essentially a miraculous vision. 

So constituted there can be no doubt that religious 
sanctions, and religious motives, have been among the 
most powerful in the evolution of man. It is the inev- 
itableness and the naturalness of the supernatural — to 
speak in a quite justifiable paradox — that makes it so 
extraordinary a force in human life. But it is our 
present object to show that it is a conservative, a saving 
and refining, not a developing, innovating, progressive 
force. Religion is a brake upon the wheel of social evo- 
lution, an anchor to the ship — to change the figure — 
and for this reason when we look backwards upon the 
path of ethical progress, let us say, we find her the 
mother of some of the conflicts described upon the very 
saddest pages of history. She has set up, as permanent, 
ideals which by their very nature as ideals were to be 
transcended and destroyed. She has formulated dogmas 
which have fettered the human mind for generations. 
She must by divine right make infallible decrees ; while, 
even in her midst, the religious individual of profounder 
insight pleads with might and main for broader truths, 
wider humanity, and purer morals. 

It would be instructive, did space permit, to trace out 
two further influences by which this determination of 
the essential position of religion in human culture is 
illustrated and at the same time confirmed. One is the 
historical alliance of church and state, which, when 
looked at genetically, were better described as the un- 
differentiation of church and state ; and the other is the 
great fact of tradition, ecclesiastical tradition, together 
with its embodiment in sacred books. 

As to the first of these, I think the anthropological 
evidence bears out the view that a very early form of 

334 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION 

social life may be described as politico-religious. The 
utility of the authority embodied iu a quasi-political or- 
ganization was immensely enhanced in early societies 
by the additional solidarity secured through the religious 
sentiments. So we find one set of public dignitaries, 
institutions, rites, etc., having two functions : the one 
appealing to strictly utilitarian motives of defence, 
offence, public industry, economy, etc., and the other, in 
the main ancillary to the first, that of religion, to emo- 
tional motives and claiming the additional sanction of the 
supernatural. One, the religious, depicts the organiza- 
tion of sentiment in the constitution of society ; the other, 
the political, the organization of action. Each, however, 
consolidated the social group. In process of time they 
became differentiated with the growth of individualism 
— a growth which illustrates the reverse side of our 
general problem, and introduces a new set of considera- 
tions, to be briefly presented below. But it may be 
added that the state, too, is essentially conservative ; it 
grows by very gradual accretions to the body of social 
and political practice. Hence the alliance of church and 
state not only enhances the conservatism of each, so 
long as it remains in force, but also reduces the influence 
and initiative of individuals. In my book I have illus- 
trated the two types of social change by a contrast 
between the growth of constitutional government in 
England which shows conservative and slow progress, 
with the corresponding development of republicanism in 
France, where individualism got the upper hand. It 
may be added that in France, church and state went 
down together, while in England there is still an estab- 
lished church : facts which bring out the truth that the 
union of these two great social institutions operates in 
the interests of conservatism. 

335 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

The other factor, tradition, bears to the same result, 
but more evidently and with more direct justification. 
Tradition in the church has the inviolability which 
attaches to infallible doctrine. Its own inerrancy is 
itself a part of the tradition. This adds enormously 
to the force of what is traditional and in so far again 
makes religion not only a conservative but often a hin- 
dering factor in social evolution. 1 I cannot enlarge 
upon this, but the facts are so plain that enlargement 
is really unnecessary. 

Turning now briefly to the final branch of our en- 
quiry, we are to look upon the reverse side of the 
shield : the reactive influence of religion upon individual 
thought and sentiment. Such a reaction is equally in- 
trinsic to personal development. The individual grows 
by the incorporation of elements of social suggestion. 
He is first of all a creature of conformity. His judg- 
ments of value are all formed by social give and take, 
and his religious conformities ■ — giving satisfaction as 
they do to the highest sentiments of his nature — are, 
especially when in alliance with political and other 
social sanctions, of first-rate importance in the devel- 
opment of his personal competence as an individual. 
Religion becomes from this point of view a prop to the 
ethical life — nay more, an essential ingredient in it. 
Without the recognition of the ideal self embodied in 
religious institutions, and necessarily so embodied, ethical 
growth is impossible ; for the ethical ideal is at each 
stage of culture the same personal ideal. Religion has, 
therefore, also a positive social role : it contributes a 
pedagogical, or more properly speaking a strictly psycho- 
logical, strain to the genetic constitution of our moral 

1 Witness, for instance, the desperate opposition of the ecclesiastical 
authorities in the southern states to the freeing of the negro slaves. 

336 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION 

nature. This leads us to recognize explicitly what is so 
often vaguely discerned by religious teachers, and more 
distinctly felt in their own experience by strong religious 
natures, that the fate of high morality is in some way 
bound up with the fate of positive religion. In my per- 
sonal opinion the question resolves itself into this : the 
problem as to whether, in the continued evolution of 
society, the ethical sanction can retain its force, if bereft 
of the personal ideal which, in its recognition of the 
supernatural, it is the province of religion to justify. 
The ethical nature certainly postulates such an ideal ; 
but it is in the sphere of religion that those objects are 
found upon which the ideal emotions aroused by such an 
ideal may terminate. Certainly, the schemes which have 
set out hitherto to propose substitutes for Deity have not 
worked — the religion of humanity, the religion of free 
thought, the religion of personal renunciation. And I 
think the latest of the greater writers who have come to 
such a conclusion — that social evolution may issue in 
what this writer calls the " non-religion of the future" — 
makes the matter plainer by his explicit recognition of 
the social character of religion. I refer to M. Guyau. 
M. Guyau thinks that the reverence for and pursuit of 
truth, by the methods of science, will purge society of all 
religion. But it is difficult to see how this can be if it be 
true not only, as M. Guyau admits, that the social life 
is intrinsic to religious sentiment, but also that, as we 
are here contending, religion is the natural outcome of 
factors which are intrinsic to social organization. If 
our present position be true, then to remove religion 
would be to leave society a different thing by so much 
as the presence of certain typical social and ethical 
sentiments and modes of conduct may normally count 
for in its organization. 

22 337 



XX 

SHORTER PHILOSOPHICAL PAPERS 
I. Theism and Immortality 1 

The time given me by the Editor in his kind request 
to write something appropriate to the Easter season, and 
from a philosophical point of view, on this subject, is so 
short that I can only indicate a general way of looking 
at the matter of the future life. 

Of course philosophy has no peculiar point of view, 
nor has psychology. Philosophy is only itself a way of 
looking at life and its implications ; and psychology is 
largely a body of those evident truths which we all carry 
about with us. But nevertheless the student of these 
subjects comes to see where the emphasis falls, acquires 
the habit of tracking out and criticising loose opinions 
in everybody ; and so the thought to which philosophy 
holds more firmly really represents, I take it, the 
deeper-going intuitions and more emphatic intellectual 
and moral endeavors of the time. And I shall simply 
endeavor to point out the bearing which current 
thought, as I understand it — the thought of the last 
half-century, which has proved itself fertile in psychol- 
ogy, ethics, and metaphysics — bears upon this matter of 
immortality. 

In the first place, the way of approaching the question 
of a future life is still, as formerly, but more emphatically, 

l From The New York Independent, April 2, 1896. 
338 ' 



THEISM AND IMMORTALITY 

the way of the theistic problem. The existence of God 
in a future life — that is the very meaning of a future 
life. If the philosopher finds himself unable to realize 
a fair degree of assurance that the world has in it a 
great Intelligence, whose thought the world is, whose 
existence is of old who is ever living while the universe 
is, and just because the universe cannot be without 
it — then such a one finds that there is no meaning in 
the question of a future life ; for in criticising God out 
of the universe, he has laid himself low, and all other 
intellectual and moral beings too. The lesser must go 
with the greater ; God gone, who are we ? This is, as I 
have intimated, an old way of getting at the question of 
immortality, the way through the theistic problem ; but 
philosophy has seemed to confirm it in two ways : by 
naturalizing God, if I may so speak, and then by super- 
naturalizing nature, especially human nature, man. 
These points may be explained a little ; and I may 
best do it by drawing on psychology. 

The old theistic " proofs " were argumentative, log- 
ical. They proceeded on certain physiological assump- 
tions, it is true, such as the " idea of God," " the idea of 
the perfect," the " notion of design," etc. But these 
psychological assumptions were uncriticised. The stress 
fell on the arguments. As arguments they must con- 
form to rigid logical rules and formulas — formulas 
which took the ideas and notions out of the living whole 
of our thought for the most part, and made them ab- 
stractions to be reasoned about. Now I do not mean to 
say that such argumentation has no value; it was the 
method of philosophy when Descartes announced his 
" first and second ontological " arguments, and when 
Anselm developed his famous argument from the " per- 
fection " of the notion of God. But it is now evident 

339 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

from the course of thought on the question, that the 
validity of such proofs rests on the straightness and 
correctness of the argument ; on the " distribution " of 
this term and the " quantification," or the " universal- 
ity," or the " conceivableness," of that. Kant saw that 
the risk in this was too large. God is too great a con- 
cession to make to logical formulas. It will never satisfy 
mankind to make God a " notion " in the first place — a 
logical universal — and then try by formulas to get a cor- 
responding "reality" into human life. Such proofs — 
even granted that they " proved " — so long as they stood 
alone, really " denaturalized " God out of his own uni- 
verse. They led right on to Deism. And it was Kant's 
endeavor, after showing this, to " naturalize " God again 
through what he called the " moral argument." And 
with what I am thus calling in a figure the " naturaliza- 
tion " of God in man and nature, Kant found belief in 
immortality also. 

Now I am going to put this " moral argument " in my 
own way and on strictly psychological grounds. What 
we really want to know in this matter of theism is 
whether God is a reality. And instead of starting to 
find out what the idea of God includes, psychology rather 
begins at the other end ; it seeks to find out what we 
mean by reality. What is real ? How is anything real ? 

The answer is — assuming much analysis and criticism 
— that the real is that which we actually find, what 
we cannot help finding, what we have to reckon with, 
what our nature presupposes and inevitably demands. 1 
Things and events are divided off, in our mental lives 
and with the growth of our experience, into certain 
great groups representing kinds, or spheres, of reality. 
The development of these spheres is a matter of prac- 

1 The reader may refer to the discussion of " reality " above, pp. 60 ff. 

340 



THEISM AND IMMORTALITY 

tical necessity with us; we have to distinguish the 
external world from the world of memory, the world 
of science from the world of art. In these things 
we have no choice, provided — we be not crazy ! 
Now what we mean by " reality " is just a group of 
experiences normally organized in a certain way; and 
we believe in realities when we recognize this tendency 
of our experiences to fall into certain characteristic 
forms of organization. We do the organizing, and 
so assert the reality as being there to be organized. 
These realities we need, and we use them practically 
as termini, fulcra, points of resistance, for our active 
conduct and living. 

A reality, then, is a form of organized experience 
which our mental nature has to have in order to be 
the mental nature it is and to grow as such. We 
naturally demand these realities, because we are get- 
ting them in answer to this demand. . And that we 
need them and get them, that is their proof. That 
the external world is real means simply that it is an 
inevitable way that the mind has of organizing what 
it finds in that certain sphere of its experience which 
we call sense-perception. Truth is the sort of reality 
which we reach by an equally inexorable demand of our 
nature that we recognize what is logical. And our ethi- 
cal and religious life in organizing its experience reaches 
the reality which we call God. I had occasion to say 
what follows some time ago in a book written for sci- 
entific purposes only : — 

" There is moral and esthetic reality no less than logical 
reality ; and there is the same reason for believing in the 
one that there is in the other, for both rest upon the fact 
that our mental nature demands certain kinds of satisfac- 

341 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

tion, and we find it possible to get them. Sensational 
reality will not satisfy our logical demands, for nature is 
often refractory and illogical. Neither will logic satisfy 
our moral and esthetic demands, for the logically true is 
often immoral and hideous. It is well, therefore, to write 
large the truth that logical consistency is not the whole of 
reality, and that the revolt of the heart against fact is 
often as legitimate a measure of the true in this shifting 
universe as is the cold denial given by rational conviction 
to the vagaries of casual feeling." 

This what I mean by the word " naturalization ; " this 
finding of the sort of reality we need in the experience 
which stimulates the need. God is the reality which our 
moral and spiritual nature needs and finds, and to make 
his reality depend entirely on the ability of the logical 
processes to cope with his reality — that seems to me to 
"denaturalize" him out of the very sphere in which 
alone his reality has any significance. What we need in 
God is a personal presence, not a logical postulate. To 
the Deist, God is not a presence ; he is afar off : he is 
not a citizen of the world, our mental world ; he is the 
director of a machine, who is somewhat afraid of his 
machine and only touches it when he has to. And there 
are a good many theological Deists in these days. 

Of course the strength of this position is the psycho- 
logical view that the final needs of our nature — those 
that arise in the organization of experience in this 
form or that — are all " equal before law." Each is its 
own justification. So much comes from psychology. 
But logic also has now practically accepted as much. 
The doctrine of " judgment " in the later Logics (Bren- 
tano, Erdmann, Sigwart) rests upon the same truth. 
Judgment is mental assent, acceptance, assurance, rati- 
fication, of reality. Without this, logic is a shell of tau- 

342 



THEISM AND IMMORTALITY 

tologies. So, even in logic, proof is no longer a thing 
merely of " moods and figures ; " it is a matter of belief. 
No logic as such can prove reality, but it is equally true 
that no logic can eradicate belief in it, nor in any item 
of it, from external reality up to God. 

This general point of view is now current in the most 
diverse philosophies, since they are becoming more 
agreed on their common psychological foundations. 
Call it the " immanence " of God with the idealists — all 
right ; that does away entirely with the " denaturaliza- 
tion " process. Call it " law " with the naturalists — all 
right, Mr. Balfour's recent grotesque scare-crow picture 
of the " naturalist " to the contrary notwithstanding ; 
for who would be " naturalized " in a kingdom without 
law, or where the law laid waste the very mental nature 
on the basis of which he reached his belief in the king- 
dom ? Mental law is natural law. It is just the postu- 
late of immortality that there is continuity of mental 
life and law from this to the other side of the river. 
Call it " environment " with the evolutionist — all right ; 
for it is just the point of the " moral argument," that 
God is through and through the environment in such a 
way that by our mental organization of our experiences 
of the environment we reach the thought of God. 

Once naturalize God in human thought in this way, 
and it becomes possible to naturalize man in the kingdom 
of the Eternal. 

That is what I meant by saying above that the newer 
way of looking at theism " supernaturalizes " man. Here 
we come to the future life by way of theism. It lifts 
man right up to eternal possibilities — gives him value 
for immortality — by making his very mental life, his 
organization of experience, his needs and struggles, 
themselves the very evidence and vehicle of the proof 

343 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

of God. Disprove God, as I said, and man goes too; 
but prove God through man, reach belief in the greater 
through the less — then the less is taken up into the 
greater. 

Picture to yourself the planetary system whirling on 
through space with no life on the worlds — no man, no 
conduct, no thought, no ideals, nothing but globes whirl- 
ing on forever. Now in your own mind you cannot help 
passing judgment on this thought. You say to yourself : 
" Miserable business, unworthy of being made ; if God 
be outside of it he must be ashamed of it: he cannot be 
inside of it ; for it does nothing but whirl to all eternity.' , 
So you conclude that there could be no God anywhere in 
such a case. The possible experience — the perception 
of mere globes, simply whirling — could not be organized 
to mean a spiritual reality. 

But now put man back again in the system — with 
his life, his ideals, his beliefs, his struggles — and the 
whirling becomes at once the most insignificant thing 
that is there ; and all because you have reinstated the 
form of natural existence which we call moral and its 
experiences which find spiritual organization. God, you 
say, must be in that ; and if that should utterly die out 
— that which gives spiritual meaning to the whole — 
this would destroy his presence also. 

But all this is not an argument ; it is rather an appeal 
to one's sense of the realities in the world, and to one's 
judgment of the values which attach to them. 



344 



MOSCOW AFTER THE CORONATION 



II. MOSCOW AFTER THE CORONATION 1 

Moscow just now — and of course all Russia, too — 
is a fit subject for light reflection. Yesterday the papers 
contained a certain note so brief that its brevit}^ was 
suggestive, considering the subject of it ; a note to the 
effect that the crown jewels and " many golden objects " 
were escorted to the depot the afternoon before and 
placed with appropriate ceremony in a specially guarded 
train, to be conveyed to the winter palace in St. Peters- 
burg. As a matter of fact, the crowd about the jewels 
was not large, as the carriages containing them, exposed 
to view, passed in front of my hotel, and everybody 
did obeisance with the evident lack of qui vive which 
follows " after the ball is over." 

In fact, Moscow is weary of ceremony. Twenty mil- 
lion dollars worth of pageantry (so it is said) in three 
weeks — say a million-worth of royal spectacle a day ! — 
must intoxicate a good deal ; especially when the occa- 
sion is not of the character of a Roman holiday. The 
coronation ceremony is, in fact, a great religious fete in 
the calendar of the Greek Church. The intoxication 
therefore is more than half religious. Then add to this 
the fearful emotion of the calamity on the Khodinsky 
Plain, 2 and the measure of moral excitement aroused in 
these days of glory may be in a measure conceived. 
More than this, too ! There is a certain exaltation of 
the national sense, due both to the complex Church-State 
character of the ceremonial, and to the superb testimo- 

• 1 From The Open Court, Aug. 20, 1896 (letter from Moscow). The 
reflections of this short paper serve to illustrate certain positions taken in 
that on " The Psychology of Religion " above. 

2 The fatal crush attending the distribution of royal gifts to the poor 
on May 18, 1896. 

345 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

Dials laid by foreign nations during this month at the feet 
of Russia. Of course, from an international point of 
view all this foreign tribute is only formal, and its mean- 
ing even in those cases — as that of France — in which it 
has a meaning, is purely politico-dramatic ; but the people 
do not take an international point of view, least of all 
in this country. And it is clearly no light thing in the 
development of the Russian national sense that the cor- 
onation, coming but once in a generation, still has this 
complex popular significance. It is a stirring up of all 
that is most deeply sentimental in men of all classes : 
national exaltation in all, personal devotion to State and 
Czar in most, spiritual excitement akin to that of con- 
version and the religious trance in the enormous mass 
of that lowest class whose presence in the streets in 
Russian cities is like leprosy to a man clean of body, and 
whose presence in the country it is which makes it im- 
possible — and will make it impossible for a long time — 
for Russia to have any other government than one of 
absolute paternalism. 

These generalities suggest the line of reflection in 
which I wish to indulge for a little. Certainly to one 
from the Occident the most remarkable thing about 
Moscow now is its exhibition of religiosity. An exces- 
sive reaction of emotion seems to be expressing itself in 
the open churches. It may be that I am underestima- 
ting the ordinary vitality of the popular devotion ; but 
it is impossible to conceive that the amount and kind of 
worship now showing itself here can be a symptom of the 
Church's normal hold upon its devotees. It is one thing 
for the passer-by, of whatever rank or caste, to doff his 
hat when passing through the Redeemer's Gate ; and it 
is quite another thing for people of every rank to jostle 
each other in the churches for place in order to touch 

346 



MOSCOW AFTER THE CORONATION' 

the floor with their foreheads, or kiss superlatively re- 
pulsive relics of bone and hair, and to interrupt the traffic 
of the streets in order to do the same before the countless 
images exposed on every block of wall. And besides 
the matter of these devotions, there is the manner of 
them. I am entirely unable to write out my sense that 
there is a certain unconscious fulness, a sort of pressure 
for utterance, a vehemence and intolerance in these 
worshippers here now which I have never seen in any 
customary and usual religious rite. Rome shows relics, 
has prostrations, makes elevations ; but one never sees 
anything in Rome that is not listless, official, and formal, 
compared with this. One would expect this in the cele- 
bration of masses — still going on — for the victims of 
the horrible catastrophe of May 18, and their families ; 
and I have already said that so soul-stirring an event 
may be an element in this general popular religiosity. 
But that was, after all, but an incident, an interruption 
of the programme, whose subsequent numbers went right 
on. The current of events carried off the dead ; and the 
public only feel the whole occasion more poignantly 
because this visitation of death served to make the whole 
time more remarkable. 

However that may be, — whether this be the normal 
spiritual life of Moscow, the Hauptstadt of the Greek 
Church, or only a temporary reaction from the events 
of the coronation month, — it has in either case cer- 
tain striking aspects. In the first place, the pro- 
found unintelligence of the whole Greek Church 
practice must strike one. It seems to have lost even 
those elements of protest and reform which we should 
expect in the Greek, as over against the Roman Church, 
from the reading of history. Image-worship could not 
be more developed than here in all its forms and vari- 

347 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

eties. Especially do the people seem possessed with a 
sense of idola fori — to strain Bacon's phrase to a new 
use ; gods of the market, the shop, and the highway. 
They make no discrimination, apparently, except that 
the Virgin seems to have the preference in number and 
size of jewels and weight of silver. They bow to an 
ecclesiastical equipage, cross themselves before a mu- 
seum case containing a metropolitan's vestments, and 
doff their hats at a suggestion of church architecture — 
all this with the same devotion shown before the real 
hand of St. Paul, the drop of John the Baptist's blood, 
a fragment of cloth once worn by the Virgin, or the 
sacred oil from the box with which Mary anointed the 
Saviour's feet. This lack of discrimination simply 
represents a stage of culture, and may be connected 
with another striking characteristic, ■ — the remarkable 
lack of aesthetic quality which the whole Greek Re- 
ligionsordnung seems to show. 

Lack of aesthetic refinement, of beauty, of form of any 
sort, seems to me to place this Greek cult very low in 
the scale of civilized religious practice. When the 
anthropology of religion comes to be written, there will 
be found, I think, a level at which the distinction made 
by the psychologists between " wonder " and " aesthetic 
reverence " will be recognized even in the externals of 
the religious life. The images, pictures, architectural 
adornments — all the media of appeal, so to speak — 
must be such that the religious sense at each stage of its 
development will find in it its fitting stimulus and satis- 
faction. At the period of Wonder, before the mind is able 
to think away from the symbol to the spiritual Presence, 
even the symbol may show the absence of those elements 
which constitute ideals at once aesthetic and religious. 
And we may find in the place of proportion, harmony, 

348 



MOSCOW AFTER THE CORONATION 

meaning, simplicity, religious suggestiveness, only gaudy 
bulk, glittering jewelry, meaningless Schein. One must 
note this contrast here, and it becomes worse when its 
setting is also appreciated. The glittering gems on saint 
and virgin are often above the dirtiest of floors ; the 
vows of the worshipper are uttered from the midst of 
indescribably filthy odors and fumes ; the architecture is 
disfigured everywhere by crude and repellent brass and 
silver trappings, and uncouth paintings ; no further use 
seems to be made of the really fine vocal effects some- 
times produced by the choirs to which no one cares to 
listen ; and no instruments, of course, aid the impression 
to the ear. As an extreme instance of the sort of vio- 
lent incongruity which is possible, I may relate that the 
celebration of the mass in the Cathedral of the Assump- 
tion three days ago was not sufficient reason for putting 
a stop to the din of hammer and saw made by the work- 
men removing the platform on which the Czar had 
crowned himself just before the altar. What I mean is 
that none of the more refined effects of quiet, solitude, 
meditation, individual surrender to a great whole of re- 
ligious influences — none of these things seem to be 
involved in the worship given before the blazing masses 
of gold, silver, and precious stones to which the people 
bow. Psychologically their condition must be one of 
" wonder ; " I do not see how it can be one of aesthetic 
or spiritual feeling when the aesthetic is in every way so 
directly outraged. 

There is another thing also which is remarkable to the 
novice in the comparative study of ecclesiastical practices, 
■ — as all students of such topics will see the present writer 
to be, — one thing which I have, however, a better right 
to note for its own sake. It is the union of royal with 
divine symbolism, and the psychological conditions which 

349 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

such a union implies. I noted above the union of these 
two elements in the extreme case of the coronation 
ceremony. It may be seen in the very attitudes which 
the market-woman or the street-boy strikes when hold- 
ing up the effigy of the Czar now on sale in the streets 
of Moscow. It is neither a question of patriotism in 
our Western sense of the term, nor a question of ortho- 
doxy as the reformed theology defines it. It is much 
more primitive in its significance. It is, both with 
reference to the Church and to the Czar, a question of 
social sanity, a matter of existence in the environment 
which requires and allows no distinctions such as the 
statement of these questions implies. With eternal 
condemnation in the next life, banishment to the mines 
in this life goes very well; and it is the same joint 
authority which decrees them both. Why talk about 
severity or justice in the case of either? 

Supposing this to be the real mental state of the lower 
class of Russians, what material it gives for the study 
of religious geology — to use a figure — material illus- 
trating the lower and undifferentiated forms of human 
sentiment. It has often been said that evolution could 
be studied by means of the comparative investigation of 
peoples at different stages of culture, and something of 
it has been done ; but I do not know that any one has 
suggested the study of the religious rites still alive, for 
light upon the development and differentiation of such 
sentiments as patriotism, social feeling, religious and 
ethical sentiment, from their common stock or stocks. 
It may be — to keep to the case before us — that both 
the " divine right of kings " and the " temporal power " 
of the Church have the same psychological justification, 
from an evolution point of view. The historical separa- 
tion of Church and State may be looked upon as real 

350 



MOSCOW AFTER THE CORONATION 

evidence and symptom of the dawning of higher refine- 
ment and discrimination in social values. 1 In other words, 
we do not have to resort to historical anthropology and 
the specimens of the ethnological museums for light 
upon the development of the human sentiments ; we may 
study the different stages alive, so to speak, in the cults 
and rites of to-day. There are strata in the culture con- 
ditions of living religions, and the psychological anthro- 
pologist may theoretically put them together so that 
curves of progress of such sentiments as patriotism, re- 
ligious awe, respect for woman, etc., may be plotted on 
a cross-section of the whole deposit — curves which 
intersect, flow together, or differentiate at definite depths 
and altitudes. 

Of course such a science is difficult ; but it has its 
safeguards. Anthropology, on the psychological side, is 
just now coming to the generalization that different races 
and stocks show the same mental constructions — i. e., 
intellectual, sentimental, social, etc. — at parallel stages 
of their progress. Even philology is finding that homol- 
ogies in roots and stems do not prove connections be- 
tween languages, since language has in all cases the same 
psychology and the same vocal apparatus. The biolo- 
gists are coming to a similar understanding in their prin- 
ciple of " determinate evolution," which perhaps has 
after all its ground in the mental factor in the ascent 
of life. This principle, which in the history of culture 
we may call that of " determinate moral evolution," 
serves as a constant test and check upon isolated lines of 
culture-history, — as that, say, of the religious develop- 
ment of the Russian peoples. 

Of course I attach little importance to the observa- 
tions made above on the rites, etc., seen in the churches 

1 Cf. the remarks on this subject made above, pp. 334 f. 
351 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

in Moscow and elsewhere in Russia ; it is summer, the 
coronation has just taken place, the aristocracy do not 
attend the daily public mass. But that again does no 
hurt to my general reflection. For a single people may 
show, in its different classes, several strata of culture ; 
indeed, what else can caste distinctions be when looked 
at from an anthropological point of view ? And we may 
have in a single civilization a recapitulation of culture- 
history, which, when spread out in time, would represent 
the toils and upheavals of many social epochs. 

But — to return to Moscow — I cannot put down my 
pen without one more reflection, albeit of a less philo- 
sophical character. Yet it is philosophical in a sense ! 
We are told by some that a people's culture and philos- 
ophy may be traced by means of the special development 
of their sense-perceptions. The idealists — the Greeks 
— are visual, eye-minded, their best sense is sight ; the 
realists — the Scots — are tactual, they have a firm sense 
of resistance, they react best to things of contact ; and 
so on. If this be so, it may serve my reflection to say 
that whatever the Russian culture be in its psychological 
roots, negatively one thing is safe — it is not olfactory ! 
A Paris correspondent of a London journal recently 
wrote to his paper : " In Paris we have had a drought, a 
dreadful drought;. and oh, where is the committee on 
smells ! " No one can remain many days in Moscow 
without sighing for the same committee, and especially 
a Moscow apres le couronnement ! 



352 



MR. SPENCER'S PHILOSOPHY 

III. Mr. Spencer's Philosophy 1 

In speaking briefly of Mr. Spencer's psychology, per- 
haps I can do no better than throw the impressions which 
I have into the form of informal pros and cons. I should 
premise what I have to say, however, with the remark 
that one of my reasons for not accepting your kind invi- 
tation to be present and speak on this occasion, was that 
I could not just now find time to put in exact form such 
a detailed appreciation as the proper attitude toward so 
great a subject requires. Yet I feel unwilling to allow 
the occasion to pass without bringing a trifle of some 
kind to add to your fuller tribute to Mr. Spencer. I 
beg, therefore, that you will consider what I say as im- 
pressions left on my mind from the study of Mr. Spencer's 
volumes — my personal reaction to his work — rather 
than as a well-formed opinion which I should in any way 
wish to commend to others. 

First, then, for the pros. 

1. Of course, the great and evident service rendered 
by Mr. Spencer in the many departments of his labor, 
has been his deliberate and argued advocacy of evolution. 
In all the spheres of the application of evolution doctrine, 
there was a prejudice to overcome ; in none, so much as 
in psychology. It is not overcome yet. Spencer's is to- 
day the name to refute, to pulverize, to anathematize, to 
ridicule, by the opposition which in Huxley's case spoke 
through the Bishop of Oxford, and which has used 
Spencer for its fulcrum ever since in raising the resistance 
with which science loads the other end of the lever. Fire 
a gun at the "First Principles," put to flight "feelings 

1 From The American Naturalist, June, 1897 ; letter written to the 
Philosophical Club of Bryn Mawr College, on the occasion of the cele- 
bration of the completion of Mr. Spencer's Synthetic Philosophy. 
23 353 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

and representative feelings and re-representative feel- 
ings,'' — and the cosmos is safe. In all this Spencer has 
borne the brunt. 1 But all the while Herbart and Wundt 
and James — may the last-mentioned forgive me, but he 
more than others has ridden rough-shod over the pages 
of Spencer — have been getting the credit which they de- 
serve for the coming of a naturalistic era in psychology. 

In this matter of naturalism, our ship has had to change 
her course one hundred and eighty degrees ; Spencer set 
the compass true in the new direction, and through all 
the bufferings, and breastings, and poundings, and creak- 
ings we are only just now getting her head to bear after 
his compass. 

2. It is to me also a great thing that Mr. Spencer did 
not draw too sharp a line between biological and psycho- 
logical evolution. All the talk about the boundary lines 
of science, the divisions of this Gebiet from that, this 
"point of view " here and that there — all this to the 
contrary, the objective science of mind is practically the 
great science after all. Of course, lots of qualifications 
are necessary here, and philosophers will demur, but I for 
one feel somewhat more secure when I have behind me 
the methods of objective science. Darwin's way of study- 
ing the emotions was more fruitful than that of his pred- 
ecessors. Our knowledge of memory has been most 
advanced by research in pathology and brain localization. 
If once we discover pain-nerves, we refute a theory aca- 
demic from the year one. Now the credit of taking this 
objective point of view generally and of so deliberately 
using biological data and even biological explanations 

1 It is a pity that he should also have to bear the brunt when the com- 
petent writers — such as Professor James Ward, in his Naturalism and 
Agnosticism — select his name to put upon certain of their " men of 
straw y> I 

354 



MR. SPENCERS PHILOSOPHY 

belongs to Spencer. What is the use trying to complete 
a psychology simply as such ? What is the good trying 
with Wundt to abstract " pure feeling " from " pure 
sensation " when really each is pure mythology ? Is it 
not the defect of biology also that it tries too much to 
complete a biology merely as such, without the help of 
psychology? When two sciences are ripe enough to fall 
together and be one, that is good ; and there is no earthly 
use in trying to keep them as far as possible apart in the 
meantime. In this, I think, Spencer was right. There 
is only one evolution, let us keep an eye on both sides 
of it. 

3. As to Mr. Spencer's positive contributions to psy- 
chology, these I may not discuss in detail. They are 
mainly incidental to the ideas in the service of which his 
speculations were made. His theories have nearly all 
been disproved ; I mean his particular theories. But his 
contributions by the way are of very great importance. 
And many of the disproved theories have been guiding- 
threads for thought and motives for research to countless 
workers. One cannot open a competent book in any of 
three or four great departments of thought, without 
finding the most fruitful discussions turning about the 
hypotheses of Spencer. I take it that this is one of the 
greatest scientific services of a great man — to lead others 
in definitely directed effort — even when his private 
views go down in the result. 

And now for the cons. 

Here what there is to say seems to me to be mainly a 
statement of the limitations incident to the very qualities 
which we have found to be Mr. Spencer's principal claim 
to our admiration. Every great idea seems in its first 
blush simpler than it is. Natural selection, for example, 
is proving itself by giving ground. But the fame of its 

355 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

author, Darwin, does not suffer from that — even apart 
from the fact that Darwin was wiser than are his disciples ! 
We are now saying " back to Darwin," and although we 
can never say " back to Spencer," yet Spencer has his 
place fixed for all that. The real hmitations of Spencer 
are evident just in this contrast with Darwin. 

1. Spencer's genetic Psychology was an idea, just as 
his genetic Biology and Sociology were ideas, and the 
same idea. But he could not prove this idea in all these 
departments. He could only see the evident and surface 
facts which his idea was likely to explain. This he did 
in a very remarkable way in the System of Synthetic 
Philosophy, the completion of which you are celebrating 
to-day. It is marvellous that a single mind should have 
been able' to make so many happy hits in so rapid and, 
in a good sense, superficial survey of all these fields. 
But it was, I think, rather that he had a wonderfully 
fruitful idea than that he had a wonderfully great mind. 
He was armed with the thought which all the natural 
sciences are tending to prove true; but the same sciences 
are showing that almost all the ways in which he took 
this idea to work were not true. This means that Mr. 
Spencer's personal theories were in the direction of his 
gifts — toward a deductive, hypothetical, inexact way of 
treating scientific details. 

2. Then as to his method, that too is a great limita- 
tion. It has always seemed to me that Mr. Spencer was 
a great example of the costliness of analogy. Analogy, 
analogy everywhere ! It is not a part of the intercon- 
nection of the sciences that the facts of one should be 
explained by analogies from another; yet such a pro- 
cedure Spencer constantly falls into. Chemical analogies 
in biology, biological analogies in psychology and soci- 
ology, mechanical analogies — integrations, dissolutions, 

356 



MR. SPENCER'S PHILOSOPHY 

reintegrations — all the way through. In psychology this 
is especially deplorable, since it leads to a general ten- 
dency — also apparent in the sociology — to be satisfied 
with inadequate analysis ; and inasmuch as the analogies 
are drawn from spheres of simpler activities, it is just the 
refinements which characterize the higher as higher that 
escape it. Everybody knows the flat sterility which 
results when the association theory is applied to the 
higher reaches of thought and conduct. It is like prov- 
ing a bed of tulips to be mere onions by going through 
them and nipping off the tell-tale blooms. So to solve the 
problems of psychology by biological or chemical analo- 
gies, is to make use of a weapon which, figuratively 
speaking, nips off all the blooms ! But this is only part 
of a greater limitation, to wit : 

3. Mr. Spencer's view of evolution is not what we are 
coming to-day to consider the true thought of natural 
genesis. Herein is the real and essential limitation of 
Spencer's work considered from a philosophical point 
of view — and possibly I am departing from the topic of 
psychology in mentioning it. He believes, I think, that 
the new not only comes out of the old, but that it is 
explained by the full statement of the old. . Now this is 
a philosophy ; and it is a levelling-down philosophy — 
whatever we say to the question as to where it finally 
lands us. It tends to state the tulip in terms of its roots. 
Now this is the motive of science, but when it is made a 
philosophy and a presupposition to science, then it is 
baleful. For besides rendering it excessively difficult to 
be a good scientist — not to judge it as a philosophy — 
it makes the thinker liable to continual " illusions of 
simplicity " — thus to designate the fallacy of taking 
things to be too simple. So with Mr. Spencer's psy- 
chology : it impresses one as a series of great illusions of 

357 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

simplicity. Many of his generalizations depend each 
upon just one striking fact of easy interpretation from 
his point of view. The "surplus energy theory" of 
play, the " dream theory " of spirit, the " dance theory," 
the " vocal theory." And many of the more important 
principles which are not of so easy an interpretation 
seem nevertheless to owe their place as corner stones in 
the system to this same tendency to simplification. Such 
are "utility "in ethics, "use inheritance" in biology, 
etc. 

4. The same thing is seen in the ease with which diffi- 
cult places are glossed over. A bridge of analogy or 
often of mere vagueness of expression covers a yawning 
gap, often at a most critical place. This, however, is. 
so common a criticism of Mr. Spencer, that I need not 
take it further. 

In conclusion I may say that the balance to the good 
in any fair estimate of Mr. Spencer's work is so enor- 
mous, that we should not hesitate to recognize as correct 
the verdict of all the world to the effect that he is one of 
the main factors in the main movement in the history of 
modern thought. 



358 



XXI 

SHORTER LITERARY PAPERS 
I. Contemporary Philosophy in France 1 

M. Taine introduces his readers to the founder of 
modern French Spiritualism in his usual racy way. 
" One morning, in 1811, M. Royer-Collard, who had 
just been named Professor of Philosophy at the Sor- 
bonne, was walking among the quais, with a very em- 
barrassed air. He had been reading Condillac — but 
embrace Condillac ! — believe and teach that all our ideas 
are transformed sensations, that space is perhaps an 
illusion! — these formulas exhaled a vapor of scepticism 
which was stifling to the fervent Christian, the austere 
moralist, the man of order and authority. But he was 
new in philosophy, he had no doctrine of his own, and, 
bon gre mal gre, he must possess himself of one. Sud- 
denly he perceived, in the window of a second-hand 
book store, between a worn-out Crevier and an Alma- 
nach des Cuisinieres, a strange little book, a modest, 
ancient denizen of the quais, whose leaves had never 
before been turned: Inquiry into the Human Mind on 
the Principles of Common Sense, by Thomas Reid. He 
opened the book, and lo, a refutation of Condillac! 
1 Combien ee UvreV ' Trente sous.'' He bought it, and 
founded the new philosophy in France." 

New philosophy then, it is the old philosophy now. 
New as a nom de guerre in the warfare with the sensa- 

1 From the New Princeton Review, III., 1887, pp. 337 f. 
359 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

tionalism of the eighteenth century, old as the con- 
servator of politics, literature, and morals in the middle 
of the nineteenth. For we now have a new " spiritual- 
ism," preserving, indeed, the traditions of the old, and 
claiming the same influence on the side of liberty and 
good order, but positing theses which would startle the 
good soul of Royer-Collard, and boasting no longer of 
its descent from Reid and Dugald Stewart. This 
descent, however, is very clear. If we may remodel 
the figure by which De Tocqueville indicates the evo- 
lution of later French literature, we may say that Reid 
begat a son in his old age and called his name Maine de 
Biran, that Maine de Biran lived twenty years and begat 
Victor Cousin, and that Victor Cousin, being a mighty 
man and strong, is begetting every day. 

The characteristics of the old spiritualism are very 
marked. It was born of the exigencies of the post- 
revolution period, when thinking men sought first of 
all an antidote to Rousseau. Be it what and come 
whence it may, give us truth, liberty, God ! " Was it 
then to play with him, O Nature, that thou didst form 
man ? If this philosophy be that of human nature, do 
not enter, O my soul, into its secrets! " So cried Reid. 
Frenchmen had entered, by force ; they added to the 
Scot's intuitive dread, a living experience of its horrors, 
and hailed " common sense " as the potent remedy. 
This is the first characteristic. 

But the ontological spirit was abroad in Germany, 
and soon found its way across the Rhine. Maine de 
Biran discarded a descriptive psychology, but, preserv- 
ing still the introspective method, saw absolute being 
in the soul, the essence of which is will. " The will is 
not different from the Ego." l The soul is efficient, and 

1 Oeuvres, iv., p. 180. 
360 



PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE 

the will is its phenomenal manifestation. And the soul 
is one throughout and indivisible. Here is the restora- 
tion both of efficient and of final cause which were 
banished by the destructive criticism of the preceding 
age — a restoration which persists in the new Spirit- 
ualism and gives color even to the thought of the 
Positivists. When Victor Cousin went to Munich, in 
1818, and surrendered his liberty to Hegel, he only 
made at a single step the advance from Biran, the 
Fichte of France, which his new master had made from 
the real Fichte, through the mediation of Schelling. 

The "new spiritualism " is the product of what has 
been called the nineteenth-century tendency — the ten- 
dency toward the reconciliation of philosophy and sci- 
ence. The concessions have been greater on the side 
of philosophy, since more philosophers have become 
scientific than scientists philosophic. M. Paul Janet 
defines the university philosophy as it became official 
about 1830 as follows: 1 

" Do you admit God, the soul, liberty, the future life ? 
Then you are a Spiritualist. If not, then not — il ri'y a pas 
de milieu. The Positivist is in no sense a Spiritualist, 
neither indeed can be." 

M. Yacherot, the historian of the " new spiritualism," 
speaks quite recently in a different key : 2 

"I do not believe that in the presence of these revelations 
(of science) it is possible to maintain the spiritualistic tradi- 
tion entire. I am more and more convinced that the time 
is come to put science at the side of spiritualism, by the 
employment of its methods, its principles, and its incon- 

1 Philosopkie frangaise contemporaine, p. 40. 

2 Le nouveau Spiritualisme (1884). 

361 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

testable conclusions. The old theology, which separates 
God from the world, has had its day, as the old physiology, 
which separates the soul from the body, and the old ontol- 
ogy, which separates spirit from matter." " Philosophy 
must bend to experience." " Spiritualism must bend to sci- 
entific methods." 

What could the Positivists wish more ? Where is 
metaphysic ? If you mean the metaphysic of the noume- 
non, the metaphysic of the Unknowable, the Absolute, 
it is excluded, replies M. Vacherot. By what law? 
By the law of experience. But if you mean the meta- 
physic of intuition, the ontology of introspection, I em- 
brace it. " The true ontology is only a psychological 
revelation." This is the method, principle, and conclu- 
sion of metaphysic, and positive science confirms it. 
This brings us back to the Scottish psychology, with 
the modifications of the later German realists ; that is, 
we see in M. Vacherot on the speculative side, a true 
disciple, as he claims, of Cousin and Jouffro}^, and on the 
positive side we find a wide concession to the claims of 
natural science. 

As might be expected, this advance toward Comte is 
repudiated by thinkers of the old school, and many 
brilliant works have been called out in the discussion. 
M. Ravaisson, in the second edition of his Philosophy in 
France in the Nineteenth Century, 1 continues to maintain 
his " spiritualistic positivism " — namely, that " the true 
substance of things is the activity of thought." He finds 
his doctrine in Aristotle, and traces it through Descartes, 
Leibnitz, Kant, and Biran, especially emphasizing the 
position of the last. " Being," said Biran, " is imme- 
diately known in the activity of the ego," and, adds 

1 La Philosophic en France au XIX Steele (1884). 
362 



PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE 

Ravaisson, " this being, through the mediation of will, is 
universal, absolute, and all-embracing." He inverts the 
formula of the materialists, and thinks he has escaped its 
implications. But matter is spirit and spirit is divine, 
hence matter is divine, and we are as nearly materialists 
as spiritualists, because we are at once neither and both. 
M. Lachelier, in doctrine the disciple, but in power the 
master of Ravaisson, constructs a doctrine of the develop- 
ment of thought in the categories of efficient and final 
cause, which is at once profound and obscure. Efficient 
and final cause are one in the unity of thought, which unity 
is embodied in the law of sufficient reason, but two in the 
unity of nature. Final cause gives a raison d'etre to exter- 
nal things, as efficient cause to internal, and by it we reach 
objectivity, activity, liberty. But we are constrained to 
ask wherein the difference consists between the two 
kinds of cause in respect to objectivity, if both are for- 
mal. How is final cause a road to things, even on the 
doubtful supposition that it is necessary to the unity of 
thought ? 

On this side of the general philosophic controversy 
we must also name Renouvier, whose critical system is 
better known to English students, 1 Francesque Bouil- 
lier, 2 one of the ablest defenders of the soul from the 
standpoint of general psychology, and the acute theolo- 
gian Pressense\ 3 

Nearer to the position of the " new spiritualists " and 
yet maintaining full independence, we find a line of well- 
known scientific men whose detailed and comprehensive 
work has won glory for France. M. Cournot i main- 

1 See Essais de Critiques g&ne'rales. 

2 Sur la vrai Conscience (1882). 

8 A Study of Origins. Eng. trans. 2d edition. 
* Materialisme, Vitalisme, Rationalisme (1875). 

363 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

tains a dynamic theory of matter, and a nisus formativus 
or architectonic principle of life, which is teleologic. 
M. Naudin, the distinguished botanist, takes arms against 
Darwin, disputes insensible modifications, natural selec- 
tion, and variation of species, substituting an internal 
primordial plastic force for the external and mechan- 
ical causes of the naturalistic evolutionists, and rising 
through the theory of second causes to orthodox theism. 
Claude Bernard, in a series of articles published in one 
volume after his death, 1 combats all forms of physical 
vitalism, and works out a spiritualistic theory of life. 
His celebrated definition of life is often quoted : La vie, 
c'est la mort — a sentence which, according to Janet, 
caused Hegel to " shake with joy." Every phenomenon 
of life is accompanied with organic destruction; but life 
continues. This is creation. Death is chemical, life is 
morphological and directive. 

On the extreme left we find the Positivists holding a 
strong position. They remember well the supremacy 
gained in 1852, when one of the chairs of philosophy in 
the Normal School was abolished because speculation 
was unpopular, and their rule of ten years, during which 
the spiritualistic tradition was barely preserved in Caro 
and Lemoine. They had also a season of rejoicing just 
after the Franco-Prussian war, when the Association 
movement was extended to France in translations of 
Spencer, Mill, and Bain, and gained influence in Taine's 
Intelligence and Ribot's English Psychology. A series 
of articles in the Revue Scientifique for 1874 expounded 
the work of Wundt and the German physiologists, and 
on January 1 — curiously enough the very day on which 
the British quarterly Mind appeared — the Revue Phil- 
osophique mailed its first issue. It would not be just to 

1 La science expe'rimentale. See, also, La Vie (1878). 
364 



PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE 

call the philosophical position of either of these magazines 
w positive," but the position of Professor Ribot and many 
of his co-laborers justifies us in mentioning the Revue 
Philosophique at least among the influences which make 
for Positivism. Its most important contributions have 
been from Espinas, Charles Richet, Delbceuf, and the 
members of the medical school of the Saltpetriere (Asy- 
lum for women), especially Charcot, the director. 

There can be no doubt that the " positive" view of 
things is, as Lange maintains, stimulating to scientific 
endeavor and discovery, simply on the general principle 
that men work hardest along the lines of their belief. 
And as far as philosophy is made scientific, that is, 
empirical, this benefit accrues to philosophy also, while 
the domain of speculative reservation remains untouched. 
Psychology is the disputed province, and hence the rise 
of experimental psychology. It is an exotic, it is true, 
but it has taken firm root, and is now the most promis- 
ing tree in the philosophic orchard of France. 

Two events of importance have recently tended to 
dignify this departure and to make it official : one is 
the appointment of M. Ribot to a chair in Experimental 
Psychology at the Sorbonne, the first of the kind ever 
founded in France ; 1 the other is the founding of the 
44 Society for Physiological Psychology." 

It is difficult to summarize results when activity is so 
great and discussion so warm, but we may indicate 
important works. M. H. Beaunis has the honor of 
making the first reliable experiments with view to 
establishing the reaction time for olfactory and gustatory 
sensations. He published his results in 1883, in the 
Revue Medical de VEst and the Revue Philosophique. 

1 As it happens, M. Ribot has just now resigned (1902) and M. Pierre 
Janet has been named as his successor. 

365 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

An account of his work will be found in his recent 
book, Conditions of Cerebral Activity, 1 etc. In the same 
work he treats of the forms of muscular contraction and 
arrest, and establishes, with the aid of the experiments 
of Wundt and Brown-Sequard, an important physio- 
logical principle, viz., that every manifestation of 
nervous activity undergoes an arresting influence which 
is due either to the original exciting cause or to the 
action of another nervous region. So that in every 
peripheral excitation two forces are set in play, positive 
or exciting, and negative or resting, and the resultant 
is the sensation energy of the excitation. If this is so, 
the excitability of the different regions of the nervous 
system depends upon the varying force of the arrest. 
M. Beaunis' psychological inferences are very interest- 
ing, and we transcribe them, only remarking that his 
physiological conception is founded upon established 
facts. He says : 

"This hypothesis puts in new light the mechanism of 
the psychic functions, and permits the interpretation of a 
number of facts which have been heretofore inexplic- 
able. . . . The central primal fact which rules the whole 
question is the duality seen at the basis of every psychic 
act, the double tendency, activity and its arrest — the fact 
that the psychic act is the result of two contrary move- 
ments. Transport the action of arrest into the domain of 
consciousness and you have the hesitation which accom- 
panies a voluntary movement or an intellectual determina- 
tion, into the sphere of emotion, you have the fluctuations 
of passion, into the sphere of pure speculation, the reserves 
of metaphysical doubt. All our intellectual life is a strife 
of tendencies, — impulsion and arrest." 

1 Recherches exp&imentales sur les Conditions de V Activity celebrate, etc. 
(1884). 

366 



PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE 

We note below the bearing of the doctrine upon 
ethical discussion. M. Beaunis has also prepared 
another work, Internal Sensations, for the " International 
Scientific Series." 

The best work in brain physiology has been done by 
Charcot 1 and Marique. 2 The latter investigates the 
functions of the psycho-motor centres of the brain, 
giving first a very exhaustive critical summary of the 
work of his predecessors, and attempts to show, by 
means of association fibres connecting the psycho-motor 
and sensory centres, that their combined function is 
identical with that of similar pairs in the reflex gang- 
lionic centres of the spinal cord. His fundamental 
assumptions are that " consciousness does not alter the 
conditions," and that the motor centres are co-ordinators, 
and not, through the will, originators of movement, as 
Ferrier and spiritualists in general hold. 

On the more varied problems of physiological psychol- 
ogy, we note M. Ribot's Diseases of Memory, of Will 
(1883), and of Personality. (1885), the detailed work on 
hypnotism by Binet and Fere, Pierre Janet, and Charcot, 3 
and the investigation of Delboeuf in psycho-physics. 4 
A more general work on psychology, especially fine in 
its comprehensiveness and vigour for classroom work, 
is that of Professor Rabier, 5 of the Lyc^e Charlemagne, 
member of the Superior Council of Public Instruction. 
He writes from the standpoint of advanced spiritualism 
subordinating ontology to psychology, but with a re- 
ceptive attitude toward the results of the empirical 

1 Lemons sui- les Localisations cerebrales and numerous articles. 

2 Recherches expe'r. sur le Mecanisme des Fonc. des Centres-psychomoteurs 
du Cerveau (Hopital St. Jean. Brussels, 1885). 

3 Revue philosophique, 1884-6. 

4 Psychophysique ( 1 883 ) . Also, Examen critique de la Loi psychophysique. 

5 Lecons de Philosophic : I. Psychologie (1884). 

367 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

school. He borrows largely, and generally improves 
what he borrows, as, for example, Biran's theory of 
cause and Taine's theory of sense-perception. He 
attempts to reconcile empiricism and intellectualism in 
a doctrine which he denominates intelligent empiricism : 
knowledge is empirical ; it begins with experience, but 
with internal experience, that is, with consciousness of 
the ego, which is intelligent. This is certainly, as 
Victor Brochard remarks, only a jeu de mots, and M. 
Rabier is an intuitionist after all. His book, as a whole, 
is perhaps the finest resume of the results of modern 
psychology to date (1884). 

Turning finally to the ethical discussion, we are at 
once struck with the brilliant play of the same forces. 
Ethical territory is the citadel of the spiritualistic 
philosophy, devoted once, it is true, to the completest 
destruction, but never again to be undermined by the 
sewer-canals of the burrowing sensualism of the Revolu- 
tion period. No intelligent Frenchman cares to question 
now the political function of philosophy, nor the ethical 
function of politics. Ask De Tocqueville, Laboulaye, 
Janet, and Guizot for their opinion on this subject. 
Taine may follow Voltaire, and the mantle of the 
Encyclopedists may fall upon weaker thinkers of to-day, 
but they will find that they have a more dangerous enemy 
to meet than had their illustrious predecessors. The 
corner-stone of the new ethics was laid in the lurid light 
of the politics of the Reign of Terror and the Commune, 
and this corner-stone is a principle which rests deeper in 
the foundation of human life than the theology of 
Malebranche or the ethics of Leibnitz. What is the 
principle ? Will, efficient, final, free, ultimate ; the 
dominating idea, as we have seen, in general specula- 
tion, and the pivot of ethical discussion in France. To 

368 



PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE 

show that this is true, it is only necessary to name the 
four works which are to-day, from the standpoints of 
the different schools, exerting the widest influence: 
Theory of Morals, Janet; Sketch of an Ethic without 
Obligation nor Sanction, 1 Guyau ; Liberty and Determin- 
ism? Fouillee ; The Ethical Principle^ Secretan. The 
authors of three of these are disciples, to a greater or 
less degree, of Biran, and M. Guyau's doctrine is im- 
portant both as leading the opposition and as attempting 
the construction of a " positivist" ethics. 

M. Paul Janet's work is well known in the recent 
English translation. The essay of M. Fouille'e ap- 
peared first in 1872, giving rise to wide discussion, and 
is now entirely recast. It is a direct attempt to recon- 
cile scientific determinism with personal liberty by the 
intercalation of mean terms, drawn respectively from the 
external or mechanistic — the fortune physique — and 
the internal or voluntary — the fortune morale. The 
contribution of Biran, as I have said, was the introduc- 
tion of will-force into the primitive intellectual act. A 
sense of effort accompanies every intellectual move- 
ment, and the categories are more than forms — they 
are forms of a spontaneous activity, will. This bridges 
the Kantian chasm between the voluntary and the intel- 
lectual life. Upon this basis M. Fouillee constructs a 
doctrine of " idea-forces." Every idea has a volition-en- 
ergy, necessary to itself. The intelligence is the vehicle 
of volition, and the sum of the ideas is at once the act 
of the willing self, — this on the side of the morale. 
But every idea is accompanied by a physical modifica- 
tion, and a consequent discharge of physical force. The 

1 Esquisse d'une Morale sans Obligation ni Sanction (1884). 

2 La liberte'et le Determinisme (1884). 

3 La Principe de la Morale (1884). 
24 369 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

resultant of these forces is a sense manifestation, — this 
on the side of the physique. Hence a double play of 
forces, necessarily parallel, since functionally homolo- 
gous, in one of which volition resides and in the other 
mechanism. The theoretical reconciliation is derived 
from the conception itself of " idea-force," and it is well 
to observe that the idea of freedom becomes a domi- 
nating influence in the play of those forces. The 
stronger the conviction of freedom, the stronger is its 
" idea-force," and the more real the freedom which it 
indicates. " Idea-force " is a contribution to ethical 
terminology, but the conception is familiar to those who 
know Herbart's Mechanic of Mind, and Wundt's theory 
of apperception. Another recent and very important 
work by M. Fouille'e is his Critique of Contemporary 
Ethical Systems} 

M. Secretan, on the other hand, assumes freedom as a 
postulate of the moral life. He constructs a social ethics 
upon an original obligation to act as part of a whole. 
" I recognize myself as a free element of a whole." 
Reason is a mode of will — another modification of 
Biran — and will, the individual, exists in immediate 
communion with Will, the Universal. We rise to posi- 
tive religious life and communion. M. Guyau, on the 
other hand, represents the evolution ethics in France, 
substituting the expression " least pain " for Mr. Spen- 
cer's "least resistance," and banishing freedom, final 
cause, and obligation to law. Life is the moral end, and 
the struggle for existence the earnest of its attainment. 
We must also mention M. Caro, the historian of pessi- 
mism, who delightfully characterizes the complaint of 
those who are dissatisfied with the present order of 

1 Critique des systemes de morale contemporaines (1883). 

370 



JAMES' PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

things, as a magnification of the mat en moi into the mat 
en soi. 

II. James' Principles of Psychology 1 

The fact that a recent issue of the Revue Pliilosophique 
mentioned this book as the " long-announced treatise of 
Professor James," indicates that interest in it is not con- 
fined to this continent. I think it is safe to say that no 
book on psychology, in any language, has been so eagerly 
waited for in this generation, and it is as safe to say 
that no other book on psychology has appeared in this 
generation in English that was as well worth waiting 
for. 

The book is about half made up of review articles, in 
many cases, but not all, revised and brought down to 
the latest publications. One of its most striking fea- 
tures is its breadth of reference to other writers in all 
languages. It is undoubtedly one of the most appreci- 
ative books of the work of thinkers everywhere that we 
have in English. Professor James has also given his 
book additional value by incorporating, in locis, full 
quotations from the most available and weighty authori- 
ties. The result is a book from which a reader, not 
versed in the history of thought, may get a pretty fair 
conception of the problems and schools of modern phil- 
osophy, so far as such problems rest upon psychological 
or physiological data. 

In point of style Professor James is an acknowledged 

1 The Principles of Psychology, by William James, Professor of Psy- 
chology in Harvard University. 2 vols., pp. xii, 689, and vi, 704. 
American Science Series, Advanced Course. New York : Henry Holt 
& Co., 1890. 

From the Educational Review, April, 1891. 

371 



\ 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

master, particularly as regards clearness, simplicity, and 
picturesque illustration. In this last respect he is 
surpassed, I think, by few writers on philosophical sub- 
jects now living. 

In philosophizing, two distinct literary methods or 
general styles are available, "massive" and "perspec- 
tive " styles. The massive style proceeds by a statement 
of one's position, with its modifications, all, as it were, 
in a single mass. It is involved and cumbersome, but 
painstaking and not misleading. The perspective style, 
on the contrary, proceeds by a receding series of proposi- 
tions, each more or less distinct, and each so clear that 
it seems final. It need not be said that this style is 
attractive. It simplifies philosophical thought, brings 
out clear issues and pins the vague ; but it is mislead- 
ing, especially to the novice in philosophy. 

Professor James' literary method possesses this " per- 
spective " quality to an extraordinary degree. He is 
even more panoramic than Taine. But Professor James 
suffers from what we may call inverse perspective, — a 
quality which invites no end of adverse criticism of his 
views from men who ought to embrace him as an ally. 
By the phrase " inverse perspective," I mean that he 
states the novel and most radical side of his doctrine 
first, and magnifies his difference from current views ; 
then his whole subsequent discussion tends to tone 
down and modify the earlier statement. The reader's 
first impression is one of alarm, then of less alarm, then 
of no alarm at all, but probably of self-congratulation 
that such an authority agrees with his own views after 
all. This is so important a consideration, that it is 
only just to our author to tell his general readers to 
read him with suspended judgment, not to do him the 
discredit of thinking they understand him from a single 

372 



JAMES' PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

page or a single chapter, and above all not to quote him 
without the extremest care that a counter quotation 
may not be possible. 1 

As to the method, Professor James advocates the 
positivist point of view of natural science, based both 
upon introspection and experiment, a method which late 
work has now fully justified. " This book, assuming 
that thoughts and feelings exist, and are vehicles of 
knowledge, thereupon contends that psychology, when 
she has ascertained the empirical correlation of various 
sorts of thoughts or feelings with definite conditions of 
the brain, can go no further — can go no further, that is, 
as a natural science. If she goes further she becomes 
metaphysical." (Preface.) That is, it is no longer 
empirical psychology. But Professor James' own treat- 
ment shows that interpretation is the essential need of 
the hour, even in empirical psychology. His greatest 
originality is not where he claims it — in the point of 
view. The present writer has advocated this point of 
view for several years, and half a dozen others could be 
named who have ; but his originality is in his theoretical 
construction of data — in matters of interpretation. 

In the same connection, under the phrase " psycholo- 
gist's fallacy " (L, 196), Professor James emphasizes a 
point which in our day needs supreme emphasis. " The 

1 In this respect Professor James is to be compared only with Mr. 
Bradley. He speaks of Bradley's " subtle, witty, but decidedly long-winded 
critique of the association of ideals " (ii., 604). I would not think of apply- 
ing " long-winded " to Professor James ; but neither is it just to Mr. 
Bradley. It might be said that they are both consummate masters of what 
I have called a " perspective " literary method. (The criticism made above 
may now, 1902, be extended to Professor James' later publications, The 
Will to Believe and Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results. Each 
of these has stimulated various "interpretations " of the author's meaning, 
which Professor James in turn vigorously repudiates. It is no doubt in 
part due to this writer's independent and at times capricious use of terms.) 

373 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

great snare of the psychologist is the confusion of his own 
standpoint with that of the mental fact about which he 
is making his report ". . . . " he himself, knowing an 
object in his way, gets easily led to suppose that the 
thought which is of it, knows it in the same way in 
which he knows it, although this is often very far from 
being the case." This is the very bane of current 
speculative idealism, as far as its treatment of psychology 
goes. It reads into the child the speculative essentials 
of mind — self -activity, timeless identity, community 
with an absolute self-identical consciousness, etc. The 
first thoughts of a child are aware of the objects and of 
nothing else. But the psychologist, in looking at it, 
sees the " thought's object, plus the thought itself, plus, 
possibly, all the rest of the world. We must avoid 
substituting what we know (suppose) the consciousness 
is for what it is a consciousness of." So important is 
this warning of Professor James that I would not hesi- 
tate to devote all my space to sounding it out. Take 
this from Green : " A consciousness by the man of him- 
self must be taken to go along with the perceptive act 
itself. Not less than this, indeed, can be involved in 
any act that is to be the beginning of knowledge at all. 
It is the minimum of possible thought or intelligence." 
On this assumption of the Greens and the Cairds and 
the Morrises, Professor James is not a whit too severe 
in this remark : " This is a perfectly wanton assumption, 
and not the faintest shadow of reason exists for suppos- 
ing it true. As well might I contend that I cannot 
dream without dreaming that I dream, swear without 
swearing that I swear, etc., as maintain that I cannot 
know without knowing that I know " l (I., 274). Unity 

1 A good example of this fallacy in current discussion is the following 
damaging (?) charge which Professor Watson brings against Mr. Spen- 

374 



JAMES' PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

of treatment might have been brought into Professor 
James'' account of "thought" if he had generalized the 
essentials of his theory in some such conception as that 
denoted nowadays by the word " apperception." I ven- 
ture to think, subject to correction, that all of the 
author's theories concerning "knowledge about" a 
thing, as contrasted with mere " acquaintance with " a 
thing, are covered by the current conception of apper- 
ception. But before pressing this view, let us get hold, 
as clearly as we can, of his view of knowledge in 
general. 

According to Professor James' way of thinking, what 
we have in consciousness is a stream flowing in time, — 
and empirical description of consciousness must begin 
with this stream, not with simple hypothetical sensations. 
This stream may be called, indiscriminately, Feeling or 
Thought, 1 for there is no valid distinction between them. 
Feeling is immediately cognitive, i, e., it has an object 
which it knows. What we are conscious of at any mo- 
ment is a segment of this stream, a cut through it, so to 
speak, and this is our unit of division of the stream into 
parts. Each such conscious segment or cut is a Feeling 
or Thought of an object. This object may be a single 
simple thing, 2 in which case the segment is a sensation, 
and knows the thing by " acquaintance," or it may be 

cer, i. e., that he makes " the occurrence of a sensation the same thing as 
the consciousness of that occurrence." Mind, lx., p. 543. Professor Wat- 
son reads into the consciousness of a sensation the knowledge (appercep- 
tion) of it as a sensation. 

1 In what follows I attempt to state briefly and plainly the common 
idea which runs through the chapters on " The Stream of Thought," 
" Conception," " Discrimination and Comparison," "Sensation" "Asso- 
ciation," "The Perception of Things" ("Feeling or thought" turns 
out after all to be merely loose terminology. See below). 

2 But the thing or object itself may be a relation ; that is, there are 
direct feelings of relation (i., 245-248). 

375 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

of different related external things or events, in which 
case it still has only a single object, the entire complex 
experience, but the Feeling or Thought is now a per- 
ception, conception, etc. ; its knowledge is " knowledge 
about " the thing or things. Knowledge about a thing is 
knowledge of its relations. Acquaintance with it is lim- 
itation to the bare impression which it makes " (I., 259 ; 
II., 77). Following him I shall use the words Thought 
and Feeling simply for such a segment of the stream. 

Now the present Thought may have as its object other 
Thoughts or segments of the stream, i.e., it may know 
the past, and this is memory — the fact that a present 
Thought may know (cognize, feel) what has gone be- 
fore in the same stream. The rule by which the exact 
segment of the past to be thus known is determined, is 
association, which is reduced to the single principle of 
contiguity. The reason that it is my own past that my 
present Thought knows (remembers) and no one's else 
past, we cannot say, except that my own past has a feel- 
ing of warmth (familiarity) to me, which no one's else 
past has to me, and by which I reach s<?Z/*-consciousness. 
"Remembrance is like direct Feeling; its object is 
suffused with a warmth and intimacy to which no object 
of mere conception ever attains. So sure as this present 
is me, is mine, so sure is anything else that conies with 
the same warmth and intimacy, and immediacy, me and 
mine" (I., 239). 

Further, in the stream of Thought there are nodal 
points, so to speak ; points of emphasis (attention) 
" substantive Thoughts," and between these points of 
prominence there are transition portions, " transitive 
Thoughts," unattended to (I., 243). But there are no 
absolute divisions in the normal conscious life ; that is, 
we are conscious of no breaks. When there are breaks, 

376 



JAMES' PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

the two ends of the stream grow together vitally again. 
" Within each personal consciousness, Thought is sen- 
sibly continuous." " Even where there is a time-gap, 
the consciousness after it feels as if it belonged with the 
consciousness before it, as another part of the same self " 
(I., 237) . To expect this consciousness, to feel the inter- 
ruptions of its objective continuity as gaps, would be like 
expecting the eye to feel a gap of silence because it does 
not hear (I., 238). Transitive connections can always be 
found between substantive Thoughts ; vague relation- 
ships by which the present Thought retains the tradition 
of the past. The stream of Thought is therefore contin- 
uous. There are no psychical atoms. In this supposi- 
tion the associationist psychology makes itself ridiculous. 
" A permanently existing 4 idea ' or ' Vorstellung,' which 
makes its appearance before the footlights of conscious- 
ness at periodical intervals, is as mythological an entity 
as the Jack of Spades " (I., 236). Every such so-called 
" atom " has a " fringe " of transitive connections ; it is 
prominent and vivid ; its fringe is pale and washed-out. 
But in every case it has a fringe. The simplest Feeling 
has a ragged edge, and this ragged edge links on to the 
ragged edges of other feelings higher up the stream and 
lower down (I., 255). The present Thought, therefore, 
is enriched by all the past experience of the individual, 
and the future Thought will be further enriched by 
what it inherits from the present. 

In passing down the stream, Thought undergoes 
changes. The transitive may become substantive, and 
the reverse. The fringe may shine out in relief and the 
former object sink into dim suggestion only of feeling. 
These modifications in arrangement and disposition of 
the objects of Thought are due to the mental operations 
of "discrimination" and "comparison," of which no 

377 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

more can be said than that they are irreducible and 
fundamental characteristics of Thought. 

Again, Thought is selective. Only a slight portion 
of one's past is held and utilized in the present. Our 
individual worlds are different, because by progressive 
selections we have built up our experiences differently. 
Perhaps nowhere else in psychological literature is the 
essential selective function of Thought so well devel- 
oped and so richly illustrated as here. 1 

The first peculiarity of this general conception is its 
use of terms. Feeling equals Thought, Feeling or 
Thought knows, Thought knows the past, etc. Does 
not this look like a subversion of the safest distinctions 
of current psychology ? It does, indeed. But when we 
come to study the case more closely, we find it less 
revolutionary than it looks. We find that Professor 
James admits states of pure feeling in the ordinary 
sense, states which lack all " knowledge about," or rela- 
tional quality. " In a new-born brain, this (strong 
sense stimulation) gives rise to an absolutely pure sen- 
sation " (II., 8 ; I., 272). Now whether or not we admit 
that such a state is cognitive, that is, is knowledge at 
all, the distinction is yet recognized between states 
purely or mainly affective, and states which involve 
relational construction through discrimination and com- 
parison. And I think Professor James is asking too 
much of us in requiring that we give up one of the few 
exact distinctions in terminology which descriptive 
psychology can boast, while at the same time he pre- 
serves the distinction in fact, and has no good terms to 
substitute for the traditional ones. Perhaps when he 

1 I have purposely left out of account the conception of the nervous 
basis of the Thought-stream worked out by the author. 

378 



JAMES' PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

comes to treat of pleasure and pain he will give its 
usual meaning to the term feeling. 

As a matter of conscious fact, I think the feeling of 
what is going on is distinct from the feeling of the object 
of ordinary sensation ; and even when the former feel- 
ing is made object by introspection, there is an element 
of feeling of introspection in addition to the feeling thus 
observed. Accordingly the present segment of the 
stream has two elements : first, the Thought of the 
object made up (say) of a present thing and the tradi- 
tion about it derived from experience ; and second, the 
feeling due to the cognition of this object. This latter 
f eeling is not of or about anything. For example, I see 
a very brilliant light (Thought) and it gives me pain 
(Feeling). We cannot say that the pain cognizes the 
light. Professor James would say, I suppose, that the 
Feeling of the light cognizes the light. But by Feeling 
he would mean the whole present segment, failing to 
discriminate between the feeling proper and the knowl- 
edge that there is an object and that it is a light. Even 
though we be as positivist as possible in denying any 
process more than Feeling, we still have a difference 
between. Feeling which refers outward, or backward, 
or forward, and feeling which has no such reference. 1 
So if, instead of using Feeling for the whole present 
segment of the stream, we restrict it to that portion of 
the segment which is not cognitive, and give the word 
knowledge to that portion which is cognitive, we have 
the ordinary distinction between affective and presenta- 
tive states. That is, we have a right to take Professor 

1 We might ask Professor James what the object is of the feeling of 
warmth spoken of above — say the first such feeling • before the ego-idea 
is developed. To say its object is the ego, as the author intimates in i., 
242, is the " psychologist's fallacy " again. 

379 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

James seriously in this quotation : " What we are only 
acquainted with is only present to our minds . . . but 
when we know about it, we do more than merely have 
it. . . . The words, feeling and thought, give voice to 
this antithesis " (I., 222). 

The next position is this: wherever there is an 
object, we find a " fringe " (I., 258, note), i.e., vague felt 
relations which environ the object. From this we must 
conclude that wherever there is an object, there is more 
or less " knowledge about " it. In other words, there is 
no pure " acquaintance," and knowledge has to do, after 
all, only with relations. I would say that this comes very 
near to the doctrine of relativity, if Professor James did 
not go to great pains to refute relativity (II., 900). It 
is not fair to him, however, to construe him in this bald 
way, for he holds that such relations are felt, and 
although we may not follow him in holding that rela- 
tions are only felt, still I think he proves his point that 
they are at least felt. But on his meaning of the word 
felt, the relations involved in " knowledge about " fall 
in the same category, and again, we have knowledge 
confined to relations. 

Intrinsically, here again the ordinary distinction be- 
tween feeling and knowledge is valuable, I think, and 
should be preserved. Admitting with Spencer and 
James that we have feelings of relation, still such feel- 
ing is a very different thing from knowledge. The 
same knowledge about a thing may arouse very differ- 
ent feelings in different circumstances. As Professor 
James shows, feelings of relation may be present when 
the actual relation is not. It is probable that at first a 
feeling of relation is not a feeling of that relation or of 
anything whatever ; and it is only after a child has got 
knowledge about the objects of its experience that it 

380 



JAMES' PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

learns to attach the feelings to the relations them- 
selves, and so the feelings become feelings of relation. 
To say the child has feelings of relation at the start is 
to be guilty of the "psychologist's fallacy." In short, 
such feelings were at first part of the affective portion 
of the stream, and they came to belong to the cog- 
nitive portion only because both the feeling and the 
relation are held together as part of a possible object 
of later segments of the stream. 

But to proceed: the present state is a unit state, an 
undivided state ; its object is its whole content. " The 
object of your thought is really its entire content or 
deliverance, nothing more nor less" (I., 275). It in- 
herits past states, it mirrors (knows) them, but it unifies 
them. It is an integration of its present external object 
with the past of the same person. And this integration 
is accomplished through discrimination, comparison, and 
selection in several stages of generality, giving percep- 
tions, conceptions, reasoning, etc. 

We are now able to revert to a point already alluded to 
above. The question arises : Wherein does this concep- 
tion differ from that of the apperceptionists ? Here is a 
pulse of Thought whose content is a unit object, due to 
the integration of earlier with new elements of content ; 
this object always involves relations, and these relations 
are brought out by the attention. Further, this pulse 
may be called perception, conception, reasoning, — ac- 
cording to the degree in which its integration bears 
away from concrete present experience. In other 
words : " This sort of bringing of tilings together into the 
object of a single judgment, is of course essential to all 
thinking. The things are conjoined in the Thought — 
the thinking them is thinking them together. This 
sort of subjective synthesis, essential to knowledge as 

381 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

such, is involved in Thought's mere existence " (I., 331- 
332 ).i 

With this I venture to compare my own definition of 
apperception, in which the same " essential " act of 
mind is singled out: "Apperception is that activity of 
synthesis by which mental data of every kind (sensa- 
tions, percepts, concepts) are constructed into higher 
forms of relation.'' "It is the essential mental act in 
perception, conception, judgment." "The phrase apper- 
ception singles out that act of mind which is common 
to them all — the relating activity of attention, — and 
thus by its general application emphasizes the unity of 
the intellectual function as a whole." "Whenever by 
an act of attention mental data are unified into a related 
whole, this is an act of apperception." And "in its 
discriminating, selecting, and relating results, the con- 
centration of attention is called apperception." 2 

Setting aside all philosophical implications, I see no 
difference in these two accounts except that my own 
statements have a little more of the atomism to which 
Professor James strenuously objects. But even this 
difference is due to difference in method. He ap- 
proaches the subject analytically and the appercep- 
tionists approach it synthetically. 

I have developed this point at some length because it 
serves as introduction to a broader topic. The philo- 
sophical implications spoken of are the important feature 
of such a treatise, both for general readers and for the 
teaching profession ; and while we recognize Professor 



1 Professor James' more developed view may now (1902) be seen in his 
President's Address " The Knowing of Things Together " in Psycholog. 
Review, March, 1895. 

2 Handbook of Psychology : Senses and Intellect. 2nd edition, pp.65, 
66, and 79. 

382 



JAMES 1 PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

James' right to shut out such considerations, and while 
we acknowledge fully the advantage to psychology from 
doing so, yet, in the words of our author, " of course 
such a point of view is anything but ultimate. Men 
must keep thinking ; the data assumed by psychology, 
just like those assumed by physics and the other natural 
sciences, must some time be overhauled. The effort to 
overhaul them clearly and thoroughly is metaphysics." * 
So we may well ask the question : when Professor James 
does " overhaul " the rich mass of data here presented, 
what will be the outcome for general philosophy ? 

It is in view of this question of the theory of the 
mind as arising out of empirical psychology, that the 
conception of " apperception " is important. It enables 
us to " pool our issues," so to speak, as no other con- 
ception does. The associationists have pooled theirs ; 
and if the believers in mental activity really wish to 
make a sharp and clear issue on the basis of facts, it is 
time they came to some mutual understanding and 
ceased firing into the ranks of their own army. Asso- 
ciationists will never be convinced by the idealism 
which disdains the patient interpretation of facts, nor 
will spiritualists ever be convinced by the bold assump- 
tions and crude philistinism of the kind of physiologiz- 
ing now asserting itself in the name of psychology in 
certain educational circles in America. But when it is 
possible for Wundt to defend a cause — apperception — 
theory of mind with no neglect of the data of physi- 
ology, and for Miinsterburg to join issue with him in 
favor of the effect — associative — theory with equal 
fairness to the psychological data, and then for James 
to write an exposition of them both in the same spirit, 
we feel that truth is going to be furthered and applied. 

1 Op. cit., Preface. 
383 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

Now, with this issue thus " pooled " clearly before us, 
let us inquire into the meaning of Professor James' 
book. 

What we have in consciousness is only a segment of 
what seems to be a stream. But this seeming cannot 
really be justified from consciousness itself. What 
seems to be " upward " in the stream is only that part 
of the present segment which has a peculiar "warmth " 
or coloring. Really it is all present in the pulse 
of Thought which is now ; and the present pulse of 
Thought is absolutely all I have. 1 If this be true, it 
may be asked what guarantee have I that I have a past ? 
— that there is an I that has experienced the past and 
is experiencing the present? What view of the ego 
does this doctrine of the present Thought lend itself to? 

Professor James considers this question in his chapter 
on " The Consciousness of Self," — a remarkable and 
valuable analysis of the self notion. 2 The doctrine 
which results is briefly this : self is a very complex 
notion built up from the experiences of " warmth, and 
intimacy, and felt continuity" (L, 334), which are 
handed down from Thought to Thought, becoming 
more abstract as it is thus made matter of inheritance 
(I., 333-334). The kind of experiences which have this 
peculiar " warmth," are those primarily which centre 

1 When Professor James says we know the past (i., 688, note), he comes 
dangerously near to the " psychologist's fallacy." He means that certain 
experiences now present come to be object of the present Thought in 
a peculiar way, and this peculiar way, we learn, means the past. I think 
the author himself says somewhere that the child does not distinguish at 
first between present objects and memories. 

2 This chapter and the chapters on " The Stream of Thought " and 
" Will " are in my view the ablest and most significant in the book ( together 
with the last chapter on " Necessary Truths," in which the author shows him- 
self an early and able opponent of the Lamarckian theory of the "inheri- 
tance of acquired character," now, 1902, so generally discredited.) 

384 



JAMES' PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

around interest and activity ; that is, around the volun- 
tary life (I., 298). In its last analysis the notion of 
self is the notion of an intimate activity or agency which 
has become very u warm" through repeated emphasis. 
The element of activity, when carrying this warmth of 
personal identity (I., 336) is the feeling of self. Two 
further questions, therefore, arise : is there a direct 
feeling of activity (L, 298), a pulse feeling, a flat of 
will ; and is the feeling of " warmth " which attaches to 
this activity any guarantee that there is a spiritual agent 
whose life in time reveals itself to consciousness as a 
pulse of present Thought? The latter question the 
author dismisses as too metaphysical to be discussed in 
a work on positive psychology, the former he wrestles 
with in his chapter on " Will." 

In reference to will, the author maintains that the 
effect- theory holds for involuntary attention, and for so- 
called " feelings of innervation " in voluntary muscular 
movement, but that over and above these, there is con- 
sciousness of a mental fiat or consent which cannot be put 
in the effect-category. It is the kernel of our feeling 
of self, and, considered strictly from the psychological 
point of view, it remains, as yet, irreducible. But 
whether consciousness is to be considered, consequently, 
a vera causa in nature — this again is too metaphys- 
ical a question. In short — by interpretation — this 
activity-feeling belongs to the affective portion of the 
stream of Thought, not to the cognitive portion. It is 
one of those original data which does not come from or 
by an object. It is the ground of mere acquaintance 
with self, in the nominative case, /, as opposed to what I 
know about self, in the objective case, me. 

On this ground, our author takes up the current 
doctrines of the mental principle ; and first the spiritu- 
25 385 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

alistic theory. He states his own position of best ad- 
vantage in reference to it in I., 339-340 ; and to this 
he opposes an exposition of the spiritual theory (I., 343). 
It is only necessary to compare the two expositions to 
convince us that Professor James is again finding too 
great a difference between his own position and what is 
essential to critical spiritualism. To be sure, he puts 
the statement of the soul theory in the mouth of " com- 
mon sense," and so no one need defend it who is not 
prepared to take his conception from the philosophical 
amateur. But still it is unnecessary to charge all who 
call themselves "spiritualists" with the formalism of Wolf 
and the dogmatism of Berkeley. Indeed, the author 
realizes the true position of . present-day spiritualism in 
what he says of it a page or two later (I., 345). Let us 
then repudiate with him, but still in the name of spiritu- 
alism, such formulas as these : " By the soul-substance 
is always meant something behind the present Thought " ; 
"the spiritualistic formulation says that the brain pro- 
cesses knock the thought, so to speak, out of a Soul 
which stands there to receive their influence " (I., 345). 
We do not want a better statement of the claim of 
modern spiritualism than he himself gives us in L, 
346-347. 

But more positively, let us see what kind of a sub- 
stance we are able to gather from Professor James' 
determinations in reference to the present Thought. 
To sum them up, the present Thought is a spiritual 
(thinking) presence, which is all that preceding pulses 
were, and it has a selective spontaneity of its own (I., 
212). Of the three ordinary requirements of " common 
sense " substance, being, permanence, and potency 
(activity), the only one which the author leaves in 
any doubt is the second, i. e., permaneMce. " The 

386 



JAMES' PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

Thought is a perishing . . . thing. Its successors 
may continuously succeed to it, resemble it, appropriate 
it, but they are not it" (I., 345). 

Now admitting that for psychology time is made up 
of a series of " nows," that the " now " is all I have to 
guarantee my present being, it is still hard to tell just 
what the now is entitled to include. Professor James 
rejects the association atomistic hypothesis of a series of 
detached states most emphatically. His doctrine of 
u transitive thoughts " and fringe militates against the 
construction of the successive " pulses " in any atomistic 
way. And " the sensible present has duration.'' How 
much of the stream, therefore, does a single pulse mean ? 
The nearest that the author comes to an explicit answer 
to this question is found in his discussion of the experi- 
mental determination of the area (lengthwise or time- 
wise) of consciousness for successive sounds. Here he 
finds " twelve seconds to be the maximum filled duration 
of which we can be both distinctly and immediately 
aware " (I., 61 3). l This is the " now," the " specious 
present." But there is no break between this now 
and the next now ; on the contrary, there is a con- 
sciousness of the transition from "then" to "now." 
Even though we artificially mark off the periods, we feel 
the relation of difference between them, and then bind 
them together by another " now," which inherits them 
both. So, however the appropriation of the " then " 
and the " now " by a new " now " may be accounted for, 
each of these Feelings has had duration. That is, the 
pulse, the attention, the apperceptive act, by which 
the then and the now are integrated in a new now, 

1 I have elsewhere (cf. my Senses and Intellect, pp. 185-186) criticised 
the author's figures here; the maximum time is three to four seconds, 
instead of twelve. 

387 



PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

occupies a distinct portion of time. So it seems that 
for this length of time, at least, the stream of thought 
is not a stream, but a frozen block. It stands still. If 
a Thought pulse may legitimately claim as its own, in 
the sense of absolute ownership or identity of nature, 
the contents of the stream two seconds back, it is diffi- 
cult to see why it may not own, by an equally personal 
right, the "warm" experiences which lie still further 
back, especially when we remember this additional 
back-experience was " in terf ringed," by the same personal 
ownership, with what is so claimed. 1 If figures should 
represent seconds, and square links " pulses," the links 
would overlap — and guarantee duration to the Thought. 
But leaving this, have we not in the doctrine of " ap- 
propriation " or " inheritance " of Thought by Thought, 
all the permanence that a modest spiritualism requires ? 
Confessedly the "then" comes over into the "now": 
all that my past actually was, my present is, whatever 
worth it had is available now. To argue for a perma- 
nence that does not " tell " in any way upon the phenom- 
enal series, is to waste breath ; but if it does so " tell," 
in any way, this " telling " is, in Professor James' view, 
a permanent acquisition. I am now, therefore, all I 
have been, and more. Certainly, psychology seems to 
reach her limit in asking how this can be so ; but if she 
should press the inquiry, the answer would have to be 
— either by reason of the brain, or by reason of a spirit- 
ual principle. But the former alternative Professor 
James expressly rejects in his chapter on the "Mind- 
Stuff Theory." 2 

1 This is rather a difficulty of my own than a well-thought-out criti- 
cism of Professor James. Theoretically, his conception seems to me ten- 
able, but I am unable to fit the movements of attention into it. 

2 The outcome of that chapter should be carefully weighed in the 
present connection. 

388 



JAMES' PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

I do not say that Professor James declares for spiritu- 
alism ; that would be to say that he deserts the stand- 
point of his book. But what I claim is that from his 
conception — when rid of expressions which are unnec- 
essarily hostile to the spiritual hypothesis — his concep- 
tion of the stream of Thought should bring comfort to 
spiritualists and confusion to their enemies. And the 
comfort becomes positive satisfaction when one reads 
his final chapter on " Necessary Truths and the Effects 
of Experience." Here he argues trenchantly against 
the " experience hj-pothesis," finds race experience 
also inadequate, and finally puts into his " pulse of 
Thought " a cargo of rational principles. It is to be 
hoped that Professor James may some day write us a 
" Metaphysics " ! 



FINIS 



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Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: August 2004 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION j 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 

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